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SARTOR RESARTUS. 



IN THREE BOOKS. 









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SECOND EDITION. 






BOSTON: 

JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY. 

PHILADELPHIA: JAMES KAY, JUN. & BROTHER. 

PITTSBURGH : JOHN I. KAY & CO. 

MDCCCXXXVII. 









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PREFACE 

3/ 



OF THE AMERICAN EDITORS. 



The Editors have been induced, by the expressed 
desire of many persons, to collect the following 
sheets out of the ephemeral pamphlets* in which 
they first appeared, under the conviction that 
they contain in themselves the assurance of a 
longer date. 

The Editors have no expectation that this little 
work will have a sudden and general popularity. 
They will not undertake, as there is no need, to 
justify the gay costume in which the Author de- 
lights to dress his thoughts, or the German idioms 
with which he has sportively sprinkled his pages. 
It is his humor to advance the gravest speculations 
upon the gravest topics in a quaint and burlesque 
style. If his masquerade offend any of his audience, 
to that degree that they will not hear what he has 
to say, it may chance to draw others to listen to his 
wisdom ; and what work of imagination can hope to 
please all ? But we will venture to remark that 
the distaste excited by these peculiarities, in some 

* Fraser's (London) Magazine, 1833-4. 



4 PREFACE. 

readers, is greatest at first, and is soon forgotten ; 
and that the foreign dress and aspect of the work 
are quite superficial, and cover a genuine Saxon 
heart. We believe, no book has been published 
for many years, written in a more sincere style of 
idiomatic English, or which discovers an equal 
mastery over all the riches of the language. The 
author makes ample amends for the occasional 
eccentricity of his genius, not only by frequent 
bursts of pure splendor, but by the wit and sense 
which never fail him. 

But what will chiefly commend the book to the 
discerning reader is the manifest design of the 
work, which is, a Criticism upon the Spirit of the 
Age, — we had almost said, of the hour, in which 
we live ; exhibiting, in the most just and novel 
light, the present aspects of Religion, Politics, 
Literature, Arts, and Social Life. Under all his 
gaiety, the writer has an earnest meaning, and 
discovers an insight into the manifold wants and 
tendencies of human nature, which is very rare 
among our popular authors. The philanthropy 
and the purity of moral sentiment, which inspire 
the work, will find their way to the heart of every 
lover of virtue. 

Boston, March, 1836. 



CONTENTS 



BOOK I. 








Page 
Chap. I. — Preliminary . . , . . . 7 


Chap. II. — Editorial Difficulties 






13 


Chap. III. — Reminiscences 






18 


Chap. IV. — Characteristics 






32. 


Chap. V.— The World in Clothes 






40 


Chap. VI. — Aprons .... 






47 


Chap. VII. — Miscellaneous-Historical . 






51 


Chap. VIII.— The World out of Clothes 






56 


Chap. IX. — Adamitism 






63 


Chap. X. — Pure Reason .... 






68 


Chap. XL — Prospective .... 






75 



BOOK II. 

Chap. I. — Genesis ....... 86 

Chap. II.— Idyllic 95 

Chap. III.— Pedagogy 106 

Chap. IV. — Getting under Way . . . .125 

Chap. V. — Romance ....... 140 

1* 



6 


CONTENTS. 










Page 


Chap. 


VI. — Sorrows of Teufelsdrdckh . . . 155 


Chap. 


VII.— The Everlasting No 






167 


Chap. 


VIII. — Centre of Indifference 






176 


Chap. 


IX.— The Everlasting Yea 






189 


Chap. 


X. — Pause .... 






203 




BOOK III. 


Chap. 


I. — Incident in Modern History . . . 212 


Chap. 


II.— Church Clothes 






218 


Chap. 


III.— Symbols 






. 222 


Chap. 


IV.— Helotage 






• 230 


Chap. 


V.— The Phenix 






. 235 


Chap. 


VI.— Old Clothes 






. 242 


Chap. 


VII. — Organic Filaments . 






. 248 


Chap. 


VIII. — Natural Supernaturalism 






. 258 


Chap. 


IX. — Circumspective 






271 


Chap. 


X.— The Dandiacal Body 






. 275 


Chap. 


XL— Tailors .... 






. 289 


Chap. 


XII.— Farewell 






. 296 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 



BOOK I. 
CHAPTER J. 

PRELIMINARY. 



Considering our present advanced state of culture, 
and how the torch of science has now been brand- 
ished and borne about, with more or less effect, for 
five thousand years and upwards ; how, in these times 
especially, not only the torch still burns, and perhaps 
more fiercely than ever, but innumerable rush-lights 
and sulphur-matches, kindled thereat, are also glancing 
in every direction, so that not the smallest cranny or 
doghole in nature or art can remain unilluminated, — 
it might strike the reflective mind with some surprise 
that hitherto little or nothing of a fundamental character, 
whether in the way of philosophy or history, has been 
written on the subject of Clothes. 

Our Theory of Gravitation is as good as perfect. 
Lagrange, it is well known, has proved that the plane- 
tary system, on this scheme, will endure for ever; 
Laplace, still more cunningly, even guesses that it 
could not have been made on any other scheme. 



8 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Whereby, at least, our nautical logbooks can be better 
kept ; and water- transport of all kinds has grown more 
commodious. Of Geology and Geognosy we know 
enough. What with the labors of our Werners 
and Huttons, what with the ardent genius of their 
disciples, it has come about that now, to many a Royal 
Society, the creation of a world is little more myste- 
rious than the cooking of a dumpling ; concerning 
which last, indeed, there have been minds to whom 
the question, How the apples were got in, presented 
difficulties. Why mention our disquisitions on the 
Social Contract, on the Standard of Taste, on the 
Migrations of the Herring? Then, have we not a 
Doctrine of Rent, a Theory of Value; Philosophies 
of Language, of History, of Pottery, of Apparitions, 
of Intoxicating Liquors? Man's whole life and envi- 
ronment have been laid open and elucidated ; scarcely 
a fragment or fibre of his soul, body, and possessions, 
but has been probed, dissected, distilled, desiccated, 
and scientifically decomposed ; our spiritual faculties, 
of which it appears there are not a few, have their 
Stewarts, Cousins, Royer Collards; every cellular, 
vascular, muscular tissue glories in its Lawrences, 
Majendies, Bichats. 

How, then, comes it, may the reflective mind repeat, 
that the grand Tissue of all Tissues, the only real 
Tissue, should have been quite overlooked by Science 
— The vestural Tissue, namely, of woollen or other 
Cloth ; which man's Soul wears as its outmost wrap- 
page and overall; wherein his whole other Tissues 
are included and screened, his whole Faculties work, 
his whole Self lives, moves, and has its being ? For 



PRELIMINARY. 9 

if, now and then, some straggling broken- winged 
thinker has cast an owl's glance into this obscure 
region, the most have soared over it altogether heed- 
less ; regarding Clothes as a property, not an accident, 
as quite natural and spontaneous, like the leaves of 
trees, like the plumage of birds. In all speculations 
they have tacitly figured man as a Clothed Animal; 
whereas he is by nature a Naked Animal ; and only 
in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks 
himself in Clothes. Shakspeare says, we are creatures 
that look before and after ; the more surprising that 
we do not look round a little, and see what is passing 
under our very eyes. 

But here, as in so many other cases, Germany, 
learned, indefatigable, deep-thinking Germany comes 
to our aid. It is, after all, a blessing that,»in these 
revolutionary times, there should be one country where 
abstract Thought can still take shelter; that while 
the din and frenzy of Catholic Emancipations, and 
Rotten Boroughs, and Revolts of Paris, deafen every 
French and every English ear, the German can stand 
peaceful on his scientific watchtower; and, to the 
raging, struggling multitude here and elsewhere, sol- 
emnly from hour to hour, with preparatory blast of 
cowhorn, emit his Horet ihr Her r en und lassefs Euch 
sagen ; in other words, tell the universe, which so 
often forgets that fact, what o'clock it really is. Not 
unfrequently the Germans have been blamed for an 
unprofitable diligence; as if they struck into devious 
courses, where nothing was to be had but the toil of a 
rough journey; as if, forsaking the gold-mines of 
finance, and that political slaughter of fat oxen 



10 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

whereby a man himself grows fat, they were apt to 
run goose-hunting into regions of bilberries and crow- 
berries, and be swallowed up at last in remote peat- 
bogs. Of that unwise science, which, as our Humorist 
expresses it, 

" By geometric scale 
Doth take the size of pots of ale," 

still more, of that altogether misdirected industry, 
which is seen vigorously enough thrashing mere straw, 
there can nothing defensive be said. In so far as the 
Germans are chargeable with such, let them take the 
consequence. Nevertheless be it remarked, that even 
a Russian steppe has tumuli and gold ornaments : 
also many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound 
from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into 
rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect 
not only fingerposts and turnpikes, but spiked gates 
and impassable barriers, for the mind of man ! It is 
written, " Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge 
shall be increased." Surely the plain rule is, Let 
each considerate person have his way, and see what it 
will lead to. For not this man and that man, but all 
men make up mankind, and their united tasks the 
task of mankind. How often have we seen some such 
adventurous, and perhaps much censured wanderer 
light on some outlying, neglected, yet vitally momen- 
tous province ; the hidden treasures of which he first 
discovered, and kept proclaiming till the general eye 
and effort were directed thither, and the conquest was 
completed; — thereby, in these his seemingly so aim- 
less rambles, planting new standards, founding new 
habitable colonies, in the immeasurable circumam- 



PRELIMINARY. 1 1 

bient realm of Nothingness and Night ! Wise man 
was he who counselled that Speculation should have 
free course, and look fearlessly towards all the thirty- 
two points of the compass, whithersoever and how- 
soever it listed. 

Perhaps it is proof of the stinted condition in which 
pure science, especially pure moral science, lan- 
guishes among us English ; and how our mercantile 
greatness, and invaluable Constitution, impressing a 
political or other immediately practical tendency on 
all English culture and endeavour, cramp the free 
flight of Thought, — that this, not Philosophy of 
Clothes, but recognition even that we have no such 
Philosophy, stands here for the first time published in 
our language. What English intellect could have 
chosen such a topic, or by chance stumbled on it? 
But for that same unshackled and even sequestered 
condition of the German Learned, which permits and 
induces them to fish in all manner of waters, with 
all manner of nets, it seems probable enough, this ab- 
struse Inquiry might, in spite of the results it leads to, 
have continued dormant for indefinite periods. The 
Editor of these sheets, though otherwise boasting 
himself a man of confirmed speculative habits, and 
perhaps discussive enough, is free to confess that 
never, till these last months, did the above very plain 
considerations, on our total want of a Philosophy of 
Clothes, occur to him; and then, by quite foreign 
suggestion; by the arrival, namely, of a new book 
from Professor Teufelsdrockh of Weissnichtwo ; treat- 
ing expressly of this subject; and in a style which, 



12 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

whether understood or not. could not even by the 
blindest be overlooked. In the present Editor's way 
of thought, this remarkable treatise, with its doctrines, 
whether as judicially ac6eded to, or judicially denied, 
has not remained without effect. 

"Die Kleider ihr Werden und Wirken (Clothes, 
their Origin and Influence) : von Diog. Teufelsdrockh, 
J. U. JD. etc. Stillschweigen und Cos nie - Weissnicht- 
wo, 1833. 

" Here," says the TVeissnichtwo' sche Anzeiger, 
"comes a volume, of that extensive, close-printed, 
elose-meditated sort, which, be it spoken with pride, 
is seen only in Germany, perhaps only in Weissnicht- 
wo ; issuing from the hitherto irreproachable firm of 
Stillschweigen and Company, with every external 
furtherance, it is of such internal quality as to set 
neglect at defiance." »...*■-♦ "A work," 
concludes the well nigh enthusiastic Reviewer, " in- 
teresting alike to the antiquary, the historian, and the 
philosophic thinker; a masterpiece of boldness, lynx- 
eyed acuteness, and rugged, independent Germanism 
and philanthropy (derben Kerndeutscheit und Men- 
schenliebe) ; which will not, assuredly, pass current 
without opposition in high places ; but must and will 
exalt the almost new name of Teufelsdrockh to the 
first ranks of philosophy, in our German Temple of 
Honor." 

Mindful of old friendship, the distinguished Profes- 
sor, in this, the first blaze of his fame, which, however, 
does not dazzle him, sends hither a Presentation Copy 
of his book ; with compliments and encomiums which 
modestly forbids the present Editor to rehearse ; yet 



EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 13 

without indicated wish or hope of any kind, except 
what may be implied in the concluding phrase ; Mochte 
es (this remarkable treatise) auch im Brittischen 
JBoden gedeihen ! 



CHAPTER II. 

EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 

If for a speculative man, " whose seedfield," in the 
sublime words of the Poet, "is Time," no conquest 
is important but that of new Ideas, then might the 
arrival of Professor Teufelsdrockh's book be marked 
with chalk in the Editor's calendar. It is indeed an 
"extensive volume," of boundless, almost formless 
contents, a very Sea of Thought; neither calm nor 
clear, if you will ; yet wherein the toughest pearl-diver 
may dive to his utmost depth, and return not only with 
seawreck but with true orients. 

Directly on the first perusal, almost on the first 
deliberate inspection, it became apparent that here a 
quite new branch of philosophy, leading to as yet 
undescried ulterior results, was disclosed; farther, 
what seemed scarcely less interesting, a quite new 
human individuality, an almost unexampled personal 
character, that, namely, of Professor Teufelsdrockh, 
the discloser. Of both which novelties, as far as 
might be possible, we resolved to master the signifi- 
cance. But as man is emphatically a proselytising 
creature, no sooner was such mastery even fairly 

2 



14 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

attempted, than the new question arose: How might 
this acquired good be imparted to others, perhaps in 
equal need thereof; how could the Philosophy of 
Clothes and the author of such Philosophy be brought 
home, in any measure, to the business and bosoms of 
our own English nation? For if new-got gold is said 
to burn the pockets till it be cast forth into circulation, 
much more may new truth. 

Here, however, difficulties occurred. The first 
thought naturally was to publish article after article 
on this remarkable volume, in such widely circulating 
critical journals as the Editor might stand connected 
with, or by money or love procure access to. But, 
on the other hand, was it not clear that such matter as 
must here be revealed and treated of might endanger 
the circulation of any journal extant? If, indeed, the 
whole parties of the state could have been abolished, 
Whig, Tory, and Radical, embracing in discrepant 
union, and the whole journals of the nation could 
have been jumbled into one journal, and the Philoso- 
phy of Clothes poured forth in incessant torrents there- 
from, the attempt had seemed possible. But, alas, 
what vehicle of that sort have we, except Fraser's 
Magazine; a vehicle all strewed (figuratively speak- 
ing) with the maddest Waterloo-Crackers, exploding 
distractively and destructively, wheresoever the mysti- 
fied passenger stands or sits ; nay, in any case, under- 
stood to be, of late years, a vehicle full to overflowing, 
and inexorably shut ? Besides, to state the Philosophy 
of Clothes without the Philosopher, the ideas of 
Teufelsdrochk without something of his personality, 
was it not to insure both of entire misapprehension ? 



EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 15 

Now for biography, had it been otherwise admissible, 
there were no adequate documents, no hope of obtain- 
ing such, but rather, owing to circumstances, a special 
despair. Thus did the Editor see himself, for the 
while, shut out from all public utterance of these 
extraordinary doctrines, and constrained to revolve 
them, not without disquietude, in the dark depths of 
his own mind. 

So had it lasted for some months ; and now the 
volume on Clothes, read and again read, was in 
several points becoming lucid and lucent ; the per- 
sonality of its author more and more surprising, but, 
in spite of all that memory and conjecture could do, 
more and more enigmatic ; whereby the old disquie- 
tude seemed fast settling into fixed discontent,—- when 
altogether unexpectedly arrives a letter from Herr 
Hofrath Heuschrecke, our Professor's chief friend and 
associate in Weissnichtwo, with whom we had not 
previously corresponded. The Hofrath, after much 
quite extraneous matter, began dilating largely on the 
" agitation and attention" which the Philosophy of 
Clothes was exciting in its own German Republic of 
Letters ; on the deep significance and tendency of his 
friend's volume ; and then, at length, with great 
circumlocution, hinted at the practicability of convey- 
ing "some knowledge of it, and of him, to England, 
and through England to the distant West ;" a work 
on Professor Teufelsdrockh " were undoubtedly wel- 
come to the Family, the National, or any other of 
those patriotic Libraries, at present the glory of Brit- 
ish literature ;" might work revolutions in Thought ; 
and so forth ; — in conclusion, intimating not ob- 



16 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

scurely, that, should the present Editor feel disposed to 
undertake a biography of Teufelsdr6ckh, he, Hofrath 
Heuschrecke, had it in his power to furnish the requi- 
site documents. 

As in some chemical mixture, that has stood long 
evaporating, but would not crystallize, instantly when 
the wire or other fixed substance is introduced, crys- 
tallization commences, and rapidly proceeds till the 
whole is finished, so was it with the Editor's mind and 
this offer of Heuschrecke's. Form rose out of void 
solution and discontinuity ; like united itself with 
like in definite arrangement ; and soon, either in ac- 
tual vision and possession, or in fixed, reasonable hope, 
the image of the whole enterprise had shaped itself, 
so to speak, into a solid mass. Cautiously, yet cour- 
ageously, through the twopenny post, application to 
the famed, redoubtable Oliver Yorke was now made ; 
an interview, interviews with that singular man have 
taken place ; with more of assurance on our side, 
with less of satire (at least of open satire) on his, than 
we anticipated — for the rest, with such issue as is 
now visible. As to those same "patriotic Libraries," 
the Hofrath's counsel could only be viewed with silent 
amazement ; but with his offer of documents we 
joyfully and almost instantaneously closed. Thus, 
too, in the sure expectation of these, we already see 
our task begun ; and this our Sartor Besartus, which 
is properly a " Life and Opinions of Herr Teufels- 
drockh," hourly advancing. 

Of our fitness for the enterprise to which we have 
such title and vocation, it were perhaps uninteresting 



EDITORIAL DIFFICULTIES. 17 

to say more. Let the British reader study and enjoy, 
in simplicity of heart, what is here presented him, and 
with whatever metaphysical acumen, and talent for 
meditation he is possessed of. Let him strive to keep 
a free, open sense; cleared from the mists of preju- 
dice, above all from the paralysis of cant ; and directed 
rather to the book itself than to the Editor of the 
book. Who or what such Editor may be must re- 
main conjectural, and even insignificant;* it is a 
Voice publishing tidings of the Philosophy of Clothes ; 
undoubtedly a Spirit addressing Spirits ; whoso hath 
ears let him hear. 

On one other point the Editor thinks it needful to 
give warning : namely, that he is animated with a true 
though perhaps a feeble attachment to the institutions 
of our ancestors ; and minded to defend these, ac- 
cording to ability, at all hazards ; nay, it was partly 
with a view to such defence that he engaged in this 
undertaking. To stem, or, if that be impossible, pro- 
fitably to divert the current of innovation, such a 
volume as Teufelsdrdckh's, if cunningly planted 
down, were no despicable pile, or floodgate, in the 
logical wear. 

For the rest, be it nowise apprehended that any 
personal connexion of ours with Teufelsdrockh, Heu- 
schrecke, or this Philosophy of Clothes, can pervert 
our judgment, or sway us to extenuate or exaggerate. 
Powerless, we venture to promise, are those private 

* With us even he still communicates in some sort of mask or 
muffler ; and, we have reason to think, under a feigned name ! — 
O. Y. 

2* 



18 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

compliments themselves. Grateful they may well be; 
as generous illusions of friendship ; as fair mementos 
of by-gone unions, of those nights and suppers of the 
gods, when, lapped in the symphonies and harmonies 
of philosophic eloquence, though with baser accom- 
paniments, the present Editor revelled in that feast of 
reason, never since vouchsafed him in so full measure ! 
But what then ? Amicus Plato, magis arnica Veritas ; 
Teufelsdrockh is our friend, Truth is our divinity. 
In our historical and critical capacity, we hope, we 
are strangers to all the world ; have feud or favor with 
no one, — save indeed the Devil, with whom, as with 
the Prince of Lies and Darkness, we do at all times 
wage internecive war. This assurance, at an epoch 
when puffery and quackery have reached a height 
unexampled in the annals of mankind, and even En- 
glish editors like Chinese shopkeepers, must write 
on their door-lintels, No cheating here, — we thought 
it good to premise. 



CHAPTER III. 

REMINISCENCES. 

To the Author's private circle the appearance of 
this singular work on Clothes must have occasioned 
little less surprise than it has to the lest of the world. 
For ourselves, at least, few things have been more 
unexpected. Professor Teufelsdrockh, at the period 
of our acquaintance with him, seemed to lead a quite 
still and self-contained life ; a man devoted to the 



REMINISCENCES. 19 



1 



higher philosophies indeed ; yet more likely, if he 
published at all, to publish a refutation of Hegel and 
Bardili (both of whom, strangely enough, he included 
under a common ban), then to descend, as he has 
here done, into the angry, noisy forum, with an argu- 
ment that cannot but exasperate and divide. Not, 
that we can remember, was the Philosophy of Clothes 
once touched upon between us. If through the high, 
silent, meditative transcendentalism of our friend 
we detected any practical tendency whatever, it was 
at most political, and towards a certain prospective, 
and for the present quite speculative, radicalism ; as, 
indeed, some correspondence, on his part, with Herr 
Oken of Jena was now and then suspected ; though 
his special contributions to the Isis could never be 
more than surmised at. But, at all events, nothing 
moral, still less any thing didactico-religious, was 
looked for from him. 

Well do we recollect the last words he spoke in our 
hearing ; which, indeed, with the night they were 
uttered in, are to be forever remembered. Lifting 
his huge tumbler of Gukguk, * and for a moment 
lowering his tobacco-pipe, he stood up in full coffee- 
house (it was Zurn Grtinen Game, the largest in 
Weissnichtwo, where all the virtuosity, and nearly all 
the intellect of the place assembled of an evening) ; 
and there, with low, soul-stirring tone, and the look 
truly of an angel, though whether of a white or of a 
black one might be dubious, proposed this toast: Die 
Sache der Armen in Gottes unci Teufels Namen (The 

* Gukguk is, unhappily, only an academical — Beer. 



20 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

I 

Cause of the Poor, in Heaven's name and 's) ! 

One full shout, breaking the leaden silence, then a 
gurgle of innumerable emptying bumpers, again fol- 
lowed by universal cheering, returned him loud ac- 
claim. It was the finale of the night ; resuming their 
pipes ; in the highest enthusiasm, amid volumes of 
tobacco-smoke ; triumphant, cloudcapt without and 
within, the assembly broke up, each to his thoughtful 
pillow. Bleibt dock ein echter Spass- und Galgen- 
vogel, said several ; meaning thereby that, one day, 
he would probably be hanged for his democratic sen- 
timents. Wo steckt der Schalk? added they, looking 
round ; but Teufelsdruckh had retired by private alleys, 
and the compiler of these pages beheld him no more. 

In such scenes has it been our lot 4o live with this 
philosopher, such estimate to form of his purposes 
and powers. And yet, thou brave Teufelsdrockh, who 
could tell what lurked in thee 1 Under those thick 
locks of thine, so long and lank, overlapping roof-wise 
the gravest face we ever in this world saw, there dwelt 
a most busy brain. In thy eyes, too, deep under their 
shaggy brows, and looking out so still and dreamy? 
have we not noticed gleams of an ethereal or else a 
diabolic fire, and have fancied that their stillness was 
but the rest of infinite motion, the sleep of a spinning- 
top ? Thy little finger, there as in loose, ill-brushed, 
threadbare habiliments thou sattest, amid litter and 
lumber, whole days, to " think, and smoke tobacco," 
held in it a mighty heart. The. secrets of man's life 
were laid open to thee ; thou sawest into the mystery 
of the universe farther than another ; thou hadst in 
petto thy remarkable volume on Clothes. Nay, were 



REMINISCENCES. 21 

there not in that clear, logically founded transcenden- 
talism of thine; still more, in thy meek, silent, deep- 
seated Sansculottism, combined with a true princely 
courtesy of inward nature, the visible rudiments of 
such speculation? But great men are too often un- 
known, or, what is worse, misknown. Already, when 
we dreamed not of it, the warp of thy remarkable 
volume lay on the loom ; and silently, mysterious 
shuttles were putting in the woof! 

How the Hofrath Heuschrecke is to furnish bio- 
graphical data, in this case, may be a curious ques- 
tion ; the answer of which, however, is happily not 
our concern, but his. To us it appeared, after re- 
peated trial, that in Weissnichtwo, from the archives 
or memories of the best informed classes, no biography 
of Teufelsdrockh was to be gathered ; not so much as 
a false one. He was a stranger there, wafted thither 
by what is called the course of circumstances ; con- 
cerning whose parentage, birthplace, prospects, or 
pursuits, curiosity has indeed made inquiries, but 
satisfied herself with the most indistinct replies. For 
himself, he was a man so still and altogether unpar- 
ticipating, that to question him even afar off on such 
particulars was a thing of more than usual delicacy ; 
besides, in his sly way, he had ever some quaint turn, 
not without its satirical edge, wherewith to divert such 
intrusions, and deter you from the like. Wits spoke 
of him secretly as if he were a kind of Melchizedek, 
without father or mother of any kind; sometimes, 
with reference to his great historic and statistic know- 
ledge, and the vivid way he had of expressing himself 
like an eyewitness of distant transactions and scenes, 



22 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

they called him the Ewige Jude, Everlasting, or, as 
we say, Wandering Jew. 

To the most, indeed, he had become not so much a 
man as a thing ; which thing doubtless they were 
accustomed to see, and with satisfaction ; but no more 
thought of accounting for than for the fabrication of 
their daily Jlllgemeine Zeitung, or the domestic habits 
of the sun. Both were there and welcome ; the 
world enjoyed what good was in them, and thought 
no more of the matter. The man Teufelsdrockh 
passed and repassed, in his little circle, as one of those 
originals and nondescripts, more frequent in German 
universities than elsewhere; of whom, though you 
see them alive, and feel certain enough that they must 
have a history, no history seems to be discoverable ; 
or only such as men give of mountain rocks and ante- 
diluvian ruins ; that they have been created by un- 
known agencies, are in a state of gradual decay, and 
for the present reflect light and resist pressure; that 
is, are visible and tangible objects in this phantasm 
world, where so much other mystery is. 

It was to be remarked that though, by title and 
diploma, Professor der Jlllerley-Wissenscliaft, or, as 
we should say in English, "Professor of Things in 
General," he had never delivered any course; perhaps 
never been incited thereto by any public furtherance 
or requisition. To all appearance, the enlightened 
government of Weissnichtwo, in founding their new 
university, imagined they had done enough, if, " in 
times like ours," as the half-official program expressed 
it, " when all things are, rapidly or slowly, resolving 
themselves into chaos, a professorship of this kind had 



REMINISCENCES. 23 

been established; whereby, as occasion called, the 
task of bodying somewhat forth again from such chaos 
might be, even slightly, facilitated." That actual 
lectures should be held, and public classes for the 
" science of things in general," they doubtless con- 
sidered premature; on which ground too they had 
only established the professorship, nowise endowed it; 
so that Teufelsdrochk, "recommended by the highest 
names," had been promoted thereby to a name merely. 

Great, among the more enlightened classes, was the 
admiration of this new professorship ; how an enlight- 
ened government had seen into the want of the age 
(Zeitbedurfniss) ; how, at length, instead of denial 
and destruction, we were to have a science of affirma- 
tion and reconstruction ; and Germany and Weiss- 
nichtwo were, where they should be, in the vanguard 
of the world. Considerable also was the wonder at 
the new Professor, dropt opportunely enough into the 
nascent university; so able to lecture, should occasion 
call ; so ready to hold his peace for indefinite periods, 
should an enlightened government consider that occa- 
sion did not call. But such admiration and such 
wonder, being followed by no act to keep them living, 
could last only nine days; and, long before our visit 
to that scene, had quite died away. The more cunning 
heads thought it was all an expiring clutch at popu- 
larity, on the part of a minister, whom domestic 
embarrassments, court intrigues, old age, and dropsy 
soon afterwards finally drove from the helm. 

As for Teufelsdrockh, except by his nightly appear- 
ances at the Gfunen Game, Weissnichtwo saw little 
of him, felt little of him. Here, over his tumbler of 



24 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Gukguk, he sat reading journals; sometimes contem- 
platively looking into the clouds of his tobacco-pipe, 
without other visible employment; always, from his 
mild ways, an agreeable phenomenon there ; more 
especially when he opened his lips for speech ; on 
which occasions the whole cofTee-house would hush 
itself into silence, as if sure to hear something note- 
worthy ; nay, perhaps to hear a whole series and 
river of the most memorable utterances ; such as, 
when once thawed, he would for hours indulge in, 
with fit audience ; and the more memorable as issuing 
from a head apparently not more interested in them, 
not more conscious of them, than is the sculptured 
stone head of some public fountain, which through its 
brass mouth-tube emits water to the worthy and the 
unworthy ; careless whether it be for cooking victuals 
or quenching conflagrations ; indeed, maintains the 
same earnest, assiduous look, whether any water be 
flowing or not. 

To the Editor of these sheets, as to a young enthu- 
siastic Englishman, however unworthy, Teufelsdrockh 
opened himself perhaps more than to the most. Pity 
only that we could not then half guess his importance, 
and scrutinize him with due power of vision ! We 
enjoyed, what not three men in Weissnichtwo could 
boast of, a certain degree of access to the Professor's 
private domicile. It was the attic floor of the highest 
house in the Wahngasse ; and might truly be called 
the pinnacle of Weissnichtwo, for it rose sheer up 
above the contiguous roofs, themselves rising from 
elevated ground. Moreover, with its windows, it 
looked towards all ihe four Orte, or, as the Scotch 



- REMINISCENCES. 25 

say, and we ought to say, Mrts; the sitting-room 
itself commanded three ; another came to view in the 
ScMqfgemach (Bedroom) at the opposite end; to say 
nothing of the kitchen, which offered two, as it were 
duplicates, and showing nothing new. So that it was, 
in fact, the speculum or watchtower of Teufelsdrockh ; 
wherefrom, sitting at ease, he might see the whole 
life-circulation of that considerable city; the streets 
and lanes of which, with all their doing and driving 
(Thun und Treiberi), were for most part visible there. 
" I look down into all that wasp-nest or bee-hive," 
have we heard him say, " and witness their wax-laying, 
and honey-making, and poison-brewing, and choking 
by sulphur. From the palace esplanade, where music 
plays while Serene Highness is pleased to eat his 
victuals, down to the low lane, where in her door-sill 
the aged widow, knitting for a thin livelihood, sits to 
feel the afternoon sun, I see it all ; for, except the 
Schlosskirche weathercock, no biped stands so high. 
Couriers arrive bestrapped and bebooted, bearing joy 
and sorrow bagged up in pouches of leather; there, 
topladen, and with four swift horses, rolls in the coun- 
try baron and his household ; here, on timber leg, the 
lamed soldier hops painfully along, begging alms ; a 
thousand carriages, and wains, and cars, come tum- 
bling in with food, with young rusticity, and other raw 
produce, inanimate or animate, and go tumbling out 
again with produce manufactured. That living flood, 
pouring through these streets, of all qualities and ages, 
knowest thou whence it is coming, whither it is going ; 
JLus der Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin $ From eter- 
nity, onwards to eternity ! These are apparitions ; 

3 



26 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

what else ? Are they not souls rendered visible ; in 
bodies, that took shape, and will lose it, melting into 
air? Their solid pavement is a picture of the sense: 
they walk on the bosom of nothing; blank time is 
behind them and before them. Or fanciest thou, the 
red and yellow Clothes-screen yonder, with spurs on 
its heels, and feather in its crown, is but of to-day, 
without a yesterday or a to-morrow; and had not 
rather its ancestor alive when Hengst and Horsa over- 
ran thy island ? Friend, thou seest here a living link 
in that tissue of history which inweaves all being; 
watch well, or it will be past thee, and seen no more." 
" Ach mein Lieber!" said he once, at midnight, 
when he had returned from the coffee-house in rather 
earnest talk, "it is a true sublimity to dwell here. 
These fringes of lamp-light, struggling up through 
smoke and thousand-fold exhalation, some fathoms 
into the ancient reign of Night, what thinks Bootes 
of them, as he leads his hunting-dogs over the zenith 
in their leash of sidereal fire ? That stifled hum of 
midnight, — when traffic has laid down to rest, and the 
chariot-wheels of vanity, still rolling here and there 
through distant streets, are bearing her to halls roofed 
in and lighted to the due pitch for her, and only vice 
and misery, to prowl or to moan like night-birds, are 
abroad, — that hum, I say, like the stertorous, unquiet 
slumber of sick life, is hoard in heaven ! Oh, under 
that hideous coverlid of vapors, and putrefactions, 
and unimaginable gases, what a fermenting-vat lies 
simmering and hid! The joyful and the sorrowful 
are there ; men are dying there, men are being born ; 
men are praying — on the other side of a brick parti- 



REMINISCENCES, 27 

tion men are cursing; and around them all is the 
vast, void Night. The proud grandee still lingers in 
his perfumed saloons, or reposes within damask cur- 
tains; wretchedness cowers into truckle-beds, or 
shivers hunger-stricken into its lair of straw. In 
obscure cellars, Rouge-et-Noir languidly emits its 
voice of destiny to haggard, hungry villains; while 
councillors of state sit plotting, and playing their high 
chess-game, whereof the pawns are men. The lover 
whispers his mistress that the coach is ready; and 
she, full of hope and fear, glides down, to fly with him 
over the borders ; the thief, still more silently, sets to 
his picklocks and crowbars, or lurks in wait till the 
watchmen first snore in their boxes. Gay mansions, 
with supper-rooms and dancing-rooms, are full of light 
and music, and high-swelling hearts ; but, in the con- 
demned cells, the pulse of life beats tremulous and 
faint, and bloodshot eyes look out through the dark- 
ness, which is around and within, for the light of a 
stern last morning. Six men are to be hanged on the 
morrow ; comes no hammering from the Rabenstein ? 
* — their gallows must even now be o' building. Up- 
wards of five hundred thousand two-legged animals 
without feathers lie around us, in horizontal position ; 
their heads all in nightcaps, and full of the foolishest 
dreams. Riot cries aloud, and staggers and swaggers 
in his rank dens of shame ; and the mother, with 
streaming hair, kneels over her pallid, dying infant, 
whose cracked lips only her tears now moisten. — All 
these heaped and huddled together, with nothing 
but a little carpentry and masonry between them ; 
crammed in, like salted fish, in their barrel ; or 



28 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

weltering, shall I say, like an Egyptian pitcher of 
tamed vipers, each struggling to get its head above 
the others ; — such work goes on under that smoke- 
counterpane ! — But I, mein Werther, sit above it all; 
I am alone with the stars." 

We looked in his face to see whether, in the utter- 
ance of such extraordinary night-thoughts, no feeling 
might be traced there : but with the light we had, 
which, indeed, was only a single tallow light, and far 
enough from the window, nothing save that old calm- 
ness and fixedness was visible. 

These were the Professor's talking seasons ; most 
commonly he spoke in mere monosyllables, or sat 
altogether silent, and smoked ; while the visitor had 
liberty either to say what he listed, receiving for 
answer an occasional grunt ; or to look round for a 
space, and then take himself away. It was a strange 
apartment; full of books and tattered papers, and 
miscellaneous shreds of all conceivable substances, 
" united in a common element of dust." Books lay 
on tables, and below tables ; here fluttered a sheet of 
manuscript, there a torn handkerchief, or nightcap 
hastily thrown aside ; ink-bottles alternated with bread- 
crusts, coffee-pots, tobacco-boxes, periodical litera- 
ture, and Bliicher boots. Old Leischen (Lisekin, 
'Liza), who was his bed^maker and stove-lighter, his 
washer and wringer, cook, enand-maid, and general 
lion's-provider, and for the rest a very orderly creature, 
had no sovereign authority in this last citadel of 
Teufelsdrockh ; only some once in the month she 
half-forcibly made her way thither, with broom and 
duster, and (Teufelsdrockh hastily saving his manu- 



REMINISCENCES. 29 

scripts) effected a partial clearance, a jail-delivery of 
such lumber as was not literary. These were her 
Erdbebungen (Earthquakes), which Teufelsdrockh 
dreaded worse than the pestilence ; nevertheless, to 
such length he had been forced to comply. Glad 
would he have been to sit here philosophizing forever, 
or till the litter, by accumulation, drove him out of 
doors ; but Leischen was his right arm, and spoon, 
and necessary of life, and would not be flatly gain- 
sayed. We can still remember the ancient woman ; 
so silent that some thought her dumb ; deaf also you 
would often have supposed her ; for Teufelsdrockh 
and Teufelsdrockh only would she serve or give heed 
to ; and with him she seemed to communicate chiefly 
by signs ; if it were not rather by some secret divina- 
tion that she guessed all his wants and supplied them. 
Assiduous old dame ! she scoured, and sorted, and 
swept, in her kitchen, with the least possible violence 
to the ear ; yet all was tight and right there ; hot and 
black came the coffee ever at the due moment ; and 
the speechless Leischen herself looked out on you, 
from under her clean white coif with its lappets, 
through her clean withered, face and wrinkles, with a 
look of helpful intelligence, almost of benevolence. 

Few strangers, as above hinted, had admittance 
hither; the only one we ever saw there, ourselves 
excepted, was the Hofrath Heuschreeke, already 
known, by name and expectation, to the readers of 
these pages. To us, at that period, Herr Heu- 
schreeke seemed one of those purse-mouthed, crane- 
necked, clean-brushed, pacific individuals, perhaps 
sufficiently distinguished in society by this fact, that, 

3* 



30 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

in dry weather or in wet, " they never appear without 
their umbrella. " Had we not known with what 
" little wisdom " the world is governed ; and how, in 
Germany as elsewhere, the ninety and nine public 
men can for most part be but mute trainbearers to 
the hundredth, perhaps but stalking-horses and willing 
or unwilling dupes, — it might have seemed wonderful 
how Herr Heuschrecke should be named a Rath, or 
councillor, and counsellor, even in Weissnichtwo. 
What counsel to any man, or to any woman, could 
this particular Hofrath give ; in whose loose zigzag 
figure ; in whose thin visage, as it went jerking to 
and fro, in minute incessant fluctuation, — you traced 
rather confusion worse confounded ; at most, timidity 
and physical cold? Some, indeed, said withal, he 
was " the very spirit of love embodied ;" blue, earnest 
eyes, full of sadness and kindness ; purse ever open, 
and so forth : the whole of which, we shall now hope 
for many reasons was not quite groundless. Never- 
theless, friend Teufelsdrockh's outline, who, indeed, 
handled the burine like few in these cases, was pro- 
bably the best : Er hat Gemuth und Geist, hat wenig- 
stens gehabt, dpch ohne Organ, ohne Schicksah-gunst ; 
ist gegenw'drtig aberhalb-zerruttet, halb-erstarrt, " He 
has heart and talent, at least has had such, yet without 
fit mode of utterance, or favor of fortune ; and so is 
now half-cracked, half-congealed." — What the Hofrath 
shall think of this, when he sees it, readers may won- 
der ; we, safe in the stronghold of historical fidelity, 
are careless. 

The main point, doubtless, for us all, is his love of 
Teufelsdrockh, which, indeed, was also by far the most 



REMINISCENCES. 31 

decisive feature of Heuschrecke himself. We are 
enabled to assert that he hung on the Professor with 
the fondness of a Boswell for his Johnson. And per- 
haps with the like return ; for Teufelsdrockh treated 
his gaunt admirer with little outward regard, as some 
half rational or altogether irrational friend, and, at best, 
loved him out of gratitude and by habit. On the 
other hand, it was curious to observe with what reve- 
rent kindness, and a sort of fatherly protection, our 
Hofrath, being the elder, richer, and, as he fondly 
imagined, far more practically influential of the two, 
looked and tended on his little sage, whom he seemed 
to consider as a living oracle. Let but Teufelsdrockh 
open his mouth, Heuschrecke's also unpuckered itself 
into a free doorway, besides his being all eye and all 
ear, so that nothing might be lost ; and then, at every 
pause in the harangue, he gurgled out his pursy chuckle 
of a cough-laugh (for the machinery of laughter took 
some time to get in motion, and seemed crank and 
slack), or else his twanging, nasal Bravo ! Das 
glaub 1 ich; in either case, by way of heartiest ap- 
proval. In short, if Teufelsdrockh was Dalai-Lama, 
of which, except perhaps in his self-seclusion and god- 
like indifference, there was no symptom, then might 
Heuschrecke pass for his chief Talapoin, to whom no 
dough-pill he could kneatUand publish was other than 
medicinal and sacred. 

In such environment, social, domestic, physical, 
did Teufelsdrockh, at the time of our acquaintance, 
and most likely does he still, live and meditate. Here, 
perched up in his high Wahngasse watchtower, and 
often, in solitude, outwatching the bear, it was that 



32 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the indomitable inquirer fought all his battles with 
dulness and darkness ; here, in all probability, that he 
wrote this surprising volume on Clothes. Additional 
particulars ; of his age, which was of that standing, mid- 
dle sort you could only guess at ; of his wide surtout ; 
I the color of his trousers, fashion of his broad-brimmed 
steeple hat, and so forth, we might report, but do not. 
The wisest truly is, in these times, the greatest ; so that 
an enlightened curiosity, leaving kings and such like 
to rest very much on their own basis, turns more and 
more to the philosophic class ; nevertheless, what 
reader expects that, with all our writing and reporting, 
Teufelsdrockh could be brought home to him, till once 
the documents arrive ? His life, fortunes, and bodily 
presence, are as yet hidden from us, or matter only 
of faint conjecture. But, on the other hand, does 
not his soul lie enclosed in this remarkable volume, 
much more truly than Pedro Garcia's did in the 
buried bag of doubloons ? To the soul of Diogenes 
Teufelsdrockh, to his opinions, namely, on the " Origin 
and Influence of Clothes," we for the present gladly 
return. 



CHAPTER IV 

CHARACTERISTICS. 



It were a piece of vain flattery to pretend that this 
work on Clothes entirely contents us ; that it is not, — 
like all works of genius, like the very sun, which, 



CHARACTERISTICS. 33 

though the highest published creation, or work of 
genius, has nevertheless black spots and troubled 
nebulosities amid its effulgence, — a mixture of in- 
sight, inspiration, with dulness, double vision, and 
even utter blindness. 

Without committing ourselves to those enthusiastic 
praises and prophesyings of the Weissnichtwo 'sche 
Jlnzeiger, we admitted that the book had in a high 
degree excited us to self-activity, which is the best 
effect of any book ; that it had even operated changes 
in our way of thought ; nay, that it promised to prove, 
as it were, the opening of a new mine-shaft, wherein 
the whole world of speculation might henceforth dig 
to unknown depths. More specially it may now be 
declared that Professor Teufelsdrockh's acquirements, 
patience of research, philosophic and even poetic 
vigor, are here made indisputably manifest ; and, un- 
happily, no less his prolixity and tortuosity and mani- 
fold inaptitude ; that, on the whole, as in opening new 
mine-shafts is not unreasonable, there is much rubbish 
in his book, though likewise specimens of almost 
invaluable ore. A paramount popularity in England 
we cannot promise him. Apart from the choice of 
such a topic as Clothes, too often the manner of treat- 
ing it betokens in the author a rusticity and academic 
seclusion, unblamable, indeed inevitable, in a German, 
but fatal to his success with our public. 

Of good society Teufelsdrockh appears to have seen 
little, or has mostly forgotten what he saw. He speaks 
out with a strange plainness ; calls many things by 
their mere dictionary names. To him the upholsterer 
is no pontiff, neither is any drawingroom a temple, 



34 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

were it never so begilt and overhung; "A whole 
immensity of Brussels carpets, and pier-glasses, and 
or-molu," as he himself expresses it, " cannot hide 
from me that such drawingroom is simply a section 
of infinite space, where so many God-created souls do 
for the time meet together." To Teufelsdrockh the 
highest duchess is respectable, is venerable ; but 
nowise for her pearl-bracelets, and Malines laces. In 
his eyes, the star of a lord is little less and little more 
than the broad button of Birmingham spelter in a 
clown's smock ; " Each is an implement," he says, 
"in its kind; a tag for hooking together ; and, for the 
rest, was dug from the earth, and hammered on a 
stithy before smiths' fingers." Thus does the Profes- 
sor look in men's face with a strange impartiality, a 
strange, scientific freedom; like a man unversed in 
the higher circles, like a man dropped thither from 
the moon. Rightly considered, it is in this peculi- 
arity, running through his whole system of thought, 
that all these short-comings overshootings, and multi- 
form perversities, take rise ; if, indeed, they have not a 
second source, also natural enough, in his transcen- 
dental philosophies, and humor of looking at all matter 
and material things as spirit ; whereby truly his case 
were but the more hopeless, the more lamentable. 

To the thinkers of this nation, however, of which 
class it is firmly believed there are individuals yet 
extant, we can safely recommend the work ; nay, who 
knows but among the fashionable ranks too, if it be 
true, as Teufelsdrockh maintains, that, "within the 
most starched cravat there passes a windpipe and 
wesand, and under the thickliest embroidered waist* 



CHARACTERISTICS*, 35 

coat beats a heart," — the force of that rapt earnest- 
ness may be felt, and here and there an arrow of the 
soul pierce through? In our wild seer, shaggy, un- 
kempt, like a Baptist living on locusts and wild honey, 
there is an untutored energy, a silent, as it were un- 
conscious strength,, which, except in the higher walks 
of literature, must be rare. Many a deep glance, and 
often with unspeakable precision, has he cast into 
mysterious Nature, and the still more mysterious life 
of man. Wonderful it is with what cutting words, 
now and then, he severs asunder the confusion ; sheers 
down, were it furlongs deep, into the true centre of 
the matter; and there not only hits the nail on the 
head, but with crushing force smites it home, and 
buries it. — On the other hand, let us be free to 
admit, he is the most unequal writer breathing. 
Often, after some such feat, he will play truant for 
long pages, and go dawdling and dreaming, and mum- 
bling and maundering the merest common-places, as if 
he were asleep with eyes open, which indeed he is. 

Of his boundless learning, and how all reading and 
literature in most known tongues, from Sanchoniathon 
to Dr. Lingard, from your oriental Shasters, and 
Talmuds, and Korans, with Cassini's Siamese Tables, 
and Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, down to Robinson 
Crusoe, and the Belfast Town and Country Almanac, 
are familiar to him, — we shall say nothing; for unex- 
ampled as it is with us, to the Germans such univer- 
sality of study passes without wonder, as a thing 
commendable, indeed, but natural, indispensable, and 
there of course. A man that devotes his life to learn- 
ing, shall he not be learned ? 



36 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

In respect of style our Author manifests the same 
genial capability, marred too often by the same rude- 
ness, inequality, and apparent want of intercourse 
with the higher classes. Occasionally, as above 
hinted, we find consummate vigor, a true inspiration ; 
his burning thoughts step forth in fit burning words, 
like so many full-formed Minervas, issuing amid flame 
and splendor from Jove's head ; a rich, idiomatic dic- 
tion, picturesque allusions, fiery poetic emphasis, or 
quaint, tricksy turns ; all the graces and terrors of a 
wild imagination, wedded to the clearest intellect, 
alternate in beautiful vicissitude. Were it not that 
sheer sleeping and soporific passages ; circumlocu- 
tions, repetitions, touches even of pure doting jargon, 
so often intervene ! On the whole, Professor Teufels- 
drockh is not a cultivated writer. Of his sentences, 
perhaps not more than nine-tenths stand straight on 
their legs; the remainder are in quite angular atti- 
tudes, buttressed up by props (of parentheses and 
dashes), and ever with this or the other tag-rag hang- 
ing from them ; a few even sprawl cut helplessly on 
all sides, quite broken-backed and dismembered. 
Nevertheless, in almost his very worst moods, there 
lies in him a singular attraction. A wild tone per- 
vades the whole utterance of the man, like its key- 
note and regulator ; now screwing itself aloft, as into 
the song of spirits, or else the shrill mockery of 
fiends ; now sinking in cadences, not without melodi- 
ous heartiness, though sometimes abrupt enough, into 
the common pitch, when we hear it only as a monoto- 
nous hum; of which hum the true character is ex- 
tremely difficult to fix. Up to this hour we have never 



CHARACTERISTICS. 37 

fully satisfied ourselves whether it is a tone and hum 
of real humor, which we reckon among the very- 
highest qualities of genius, or some remote echo of 
mere insanity and inanity, which doubtless ranks below 
the very lowest. 

Under a like difficulty, in spite even of our personal 
intercourse, do we still lie with regard to the Profes- 
sor's moral feeling. Gleams of an ethereal love burst 
forth from him, soft wailings of infinite pity; he could 
clasp the whole universe into his bosom, and keep it 
warm ; it seems as if under that rude exterior there 
dwelt a very seraph. Then again he is so sly and 
still, so imperturbably saturnine ; shows such indiffer- 
ence, malign coolness towards all that men strive 
after; and ever with some half-visible wrinkle of a 
bitter, sardonic humor, if, indeed, it be not mere stolid 
callousness, — that you look on him almost with a 
shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to 
whom this great terrestrial and celestial round, after 
all, were but some huge, foolish whirligig, where kings 
and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and 
street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled; in which 
only children could take interest. His look, as we 
mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen ; yet it 
is not of that cast-iron gravity, frequent enough among 
our own chancery suitors ; but rather the gravity as 
of some silent, high-encircled mountain-pool, perhaps 
the crater of an extinct volcano, into whose black 
deeps you fear to gaze ; those eyes, those lights that 
sparkle in it, may indeed be reflexes of the heavenly 
stars, but perhaps also glances from the region of 
nether fire ! 

4 



38 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Certainly a most involved, self-secluded, altogether 
enigmatic nature, this of Teufelsdrb'ckh ! Here, how- 
ever, we gladly recall to mind that once we saw him 
laugh; once only, perhaps it was the first and last 
time in his life ; but then such a peal of laughter, 
enough to have awakened the seven sleepers ! It was 
of Jean Paul's doing ; some single billow in that vast 
world-mahlstrom of humor, with its heaven-kissing 
coruscations, which is now, alas, all congealed in the 
frost of death ! The large bodied poet and the small, 
both large enough in soul, sat talking miscellaneously 
together, the present Editor being privileged to listen. 
And now Paul, in his serious way, was giving one of 
those inimitable " extra harangues ; " and, as it 
chanced, on the proposal for a cast-metal king. 
Gradually a light kindled in our Professor's eyes and 
face, a beaming, mantling, loveliest light; through 
those murky features, a radiant, ever young Apollo 
looked; and he burst forth like the neighing of all 
Tattersall's, — tears streaming down his cheeks, pipe 
held aloft, foot clutched into the air, — loud, long- 
continuing, uncontrollable ; a laugh not of the face 
and diaphragm only, but of the whole man from head 
to heel. The present Editor, who laughed indeed, 
yet with measure, began to fear all was not right; 
however, Teufelsdrockh composed himself, and sank 
into his old stillness ; on his inscrutable countenance 
there was, if any thing, a slight look of shame ; and 
Richter himself could not rouse him again. Readers 
who have any tincture of psychology know how much 
is to be inferred from this; and that no man who has 
once heartily and wholly laughed can be altogether 



CHARACTERISTICS. 39 

irreclaimably bad. How much lies in laughter ; the 
cipher-key, wherewith we decipher the whole man ! 
Some men wear an everlasting barren simper ; in the 
smile of others lies a cold glitter as of ice ; the fewest 
are able to laugh what can be called laughing, but 
only sniff, and titter, and snigger from the throat out- 
wards ; or, at best, produce some whiffling, husky 
cachinnation, as if they were laughing through wool ; 
of none such comes good. The man who cannot 
laugh is not only fit for treasons, stratagems, and 
spoils ; but his whole life is already a treason and a 
stratagem. 

Considered as an author, Herr Teufelsdrockh has 
one scarcely pardonable fault, doubtless his worst; 
an almost total want of arrangement. In this remark- 
able volume, it is true, his adherence to the mere 
course of time produces, through the narrative por- 
tions, a certain show of outward method ; but of true 
logical method and sequence there is too little. Apart 
from its multifarious sections and subdivisions, the 
work naturally falls into two parts ; a historical de- 
scriptive, and a philosophical speculative; but falls, 
unhappily, by no firm line of demarcation; in that 
labyrinthic combination, each part overlaps, and in- 
dents, and indeed runs quite through the other. Many 
sections are of a debatable rubric, or even quite non- 
descript and unnamable ; whereby the book not only 
loses in accessibility, but too often distresses us, like 
some mad banquet, wherein all courses had been con- 
founded, and fish and flesh, soup and solid, oyster- 
sauce, lettuces, Rhine wine, and French mustard, were 
hurled into one huge tureen or trough, and the hungry 



40 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

public invited to help itself. To bring what order we 
can out of this chaos shall be part of our endeavour. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 

"As Montesquieu wrote a Spirit of Laws" ob- 
serves our Professor, "so could I write a Spirit of 
Clothes; thus, with an Esprit des Loix, properly an 
Esprit des Coutumes, we should have an Esprit des 
Costumes. For neither in tailoring nor in legislating 
does man proceed by mere accident, but the hand is 
ever guided on by mysterious operations of the mind. 
In all his modes and habilitory endeavours an architec- 
tural idea will be found lurking; his body and the 
cloth are the site and materials whereon and whereby 
his beautiful edifice, of a person, is to be built. 
Whether he flow gracefully out in folded mantles, 
based on light sandals ; tower up in high headgear, 
from amid peaks, spangles, and bell-girdles ; swell out 
in starched ruffs, buckram stuffings, and monstrous 
tuberosities; or girth himself into separate sections, 
and front the world an agglomeration of four limbs,— 
will depend on the nature of such architectural idea; 
whether Grecian, Gothic, Later-Gothic, or altogether 
Modern, and Parisian or Anglo-dandiacal. Again, 
what meaning lies in color ! From the soberest drab 
to the high-flaming scarlet, spiritual idiosyncrasies 
unfold themselves in choice of color; if the cut 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 41 

betoken intellect and talent, so does the color betoken 
temper and heart. In all which, among nations as 
among individuals, there is an incessant, indubitable, 
though infinitely complex working of cause and effect ; 
every snip of the scissors has been regulated and pre- 
scribed by ever-active influences, which, doubtless to 
intelligences of a superior order are neither invisible 
nor illegible. 

" For such superior intelligences a Cause-and-Effect 
Philosophy of Clothes, as of Laws, were probably a 
comfortable winter-evening entertainment; neverthe- 
less, for inferior intelligences, like men, such philoso- 
phies have always seemed to me uninstructive enough. 
Nay, what is your Montesquieu himself but a clever 
infant spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic 
book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity, in heaven 1 
— Let any cause-and-effect philosopher explain, not 
why I wear such and such a garment, obey such and 
such a law ; but even why / am here, to wear and 
obey any thing? — Much, therefore, if not the whole, 
of that same Spirit of Clothes I shall suppress, as 
hypothetical, ineffectual, and even impertinent ; naked 
facts, and deductions drawn therefrom in quite another 
than that omniscient style, are my humbler and proper 
province. " 

Acting on which prudent restriction, Teufelsdrockh 
has nevertheless contrived to take in a well nigh 
boundless extent of field ; at least the boundaries too 
often lie quite beyond our horizon. Selection being 
indispensable, we shall here glance over his first part 
only in the most cursory manner. This first part is, 
no doubt, distinguished by omnivorous learning, and 

4* 



42 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

utmost patience and fairness ; at the same time, in its 
results and delineations, it is much more likely to 
interest the compilers of some Library of general, 
entertaining, useful, or even useless knowledge than 
the miscellaneous readers of these pages. Was it this 
part of the book which Heuschrecke had in view, when 
he recommended us to that joint-stock vehicle of pub- 
lication, " at present the glory of British literature?" 
If so the Library Editors are welcome to dig in it for 
their own behoof. 

To the first chapter, which turns on Paradise and 
Fig-leaves, and leads us into interminable disquisitions, 
of a mythological, metaphorical, cabalistico-sartorial, 
and quite antediluvian cast, we shall content ourselves 
with giving an unconcerned approval. Still less have 
we to do with " Lilis, Adam's first wife, whom, accord- 
ing to the,.Talmudists, he had before Eve, and who 
bore him, in that wedlock, the whole progeny of aerial, 
aquatic, and terrestrial devils," — very needlessly, we 
think. On this portion of the work, with its profound 
glances into the Mam-Kadmon, or primeval element, 
here strangely brought into relation with the Nifl and 
Muspel (Darkness and Light) of the antique North, it 
may be enough to say that its correctness of deduction, 
and depth of Talmudic and Rabbinical lore have filled 
perhaps not the worst Hebraist in Britain with some- 
thing like astonishment. 

But quitting this twilight region, Teufelsdrockh 
hastens from the Tower of Babel, to follow the Dis- 
persion of Mankind over the whole habitable and 
habilibie globe. Walking by the light of Oriental, 
Pelasgie, Scandinavian, Egyptian, Otaheitean, Ancient 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 43 

and Modern researches of every conceivable kind, he 
strives to give us in compressed shape (as the Niirn- 
bergers give an Orbis Pictus) an Orbis Vestitus ; or 
view of the costumes of all mankind, in all countries, 
in all times. It is here that to the antiquarian, to the 
historian, we can triumphantly say : Fall to ! Here is 
learning ; an irregular treasury, if you will ; but inex- 
haustible as the hoard of king Nibelung, which twelve 
wagons in twelve days, at the rate of three journeys a 
day, could not carry off. Sheepskin cloaks and wam- 
pum belts ; phylacteries, stoles, albs ; chlamides, togas, 
Chinese silks, Afghann shawls, trunk-hose, leather 
breeches, Celtic philibegs (though breeches, as the 
name Gallia Braccata indicates, are the more ancient), 
Hussar cloaks, Vandyke tippets, ruffs, fardingales, are 
brought vividly before us, — even the Kilmarnock night- 
cap is not forgotten. For most part, too, we must 
admit that the learning, heterogeneous as it is, and 
tumbled down quite pell-mell, is true, concentrated 
and purified learning, the dropsy parts smelted out 
and thrown aside. 

Philosophical reflections intervene, and sometimes 
touching pictures of human life. Of this sort the 
following has surprised us. The first purpose of 
Clothes, as our Professor imagines, was not warmth 
or decency, but ornament. " Miserable indeed," says 
he, " was the condition of the aboriginal savage, 
glaring fiercely from under his fleece of hair, which 
with the beard reached down to his loins, and hung 
round him like a matted cloak ; the rest of his body 
sheeted in its thick natural fell. He loitered in the 
sunny glades of the forest, living on wild fruits ; or, as 



44 SARTOR RESARTIJS. 

the ancient Caledonian squatted himself in morasses, 
lurking for his bestial or human prey ; without. imple- 
ments, without arms, save the ball of the heavy flint, 
to which, that his sole possession and defence might 
not be lost, he had attached a long cord of plaited 
thongs ; thereby recovering as well as hurling it with 
deadly unerring skill. Nevertheless, the pains of 
hunger and revenge once satisfied, his next care was, 
not comfort, but decoration (Putz). Warmth he found 
in the toils of the chase ; or amid dried leaves, in his 
hollow tree, in his bark shed, or natural grotto ; but for 
decoration he must have Clothes. Nay, among wild 
people, we find tattooing and painting even prior to 
Clothes. The first spiritual want of a barbarous man 
is decoration ; as, indeed, we still see among the bar- 
barous classes in civilized countries. 

" Reader, the heaven-inspired, melodious singer ; 
loftiest Serene Highness ; nay, thy own amber-locked, 
snow-and-rose-bloom maiden, worthy to glide sylph- 
like almost on air, whom thou lovest, worshippest as 
a divine presence, which, indeed, symbolically taken, 
she is, — has descended, like thyself, from that same 
hair-mantled, flint-hurling aboriginal Anthropophagus ! 
Out of the eater cometh forth meat; and out of 
the strong cometh forth sweetness. What changes 
are wrought, not by time, yet in time ! For not 
mankind only, but all that mankind does or beholds, 
is in continual growth, regenesis, and self-perfecting 
vitality. Cast forth thy act, thy word, into the 
ever-living, ever-working universe ; it is a seed- 
grain that cannot die ; unnoticed to-day (says one), 
it will be found flourishing as a banyan-grove 



THE WORLD IN CLOTHES. 45 

(perhaps, alas, as a hemlock-forest !) after a thousand 
years. 

"He who first shortened the labor of copyists by 
device of movable types was disbanding hired armies, 
and cashiering most kings and senates, and creating 
a whole new democratic world ; he had invented the 
Art of Printing. The first giound handfull of nitre, 
sulphur, and charcoal drove Monk Schwartz's pestle 
through the ceiling ; what will the last do ? Achieve 
the final, undisputed prostration of force under thought, 
of animal courage under spiritual. A simple invention 
was it in the old-world grazier, — sick of lugging his 
slow ox about the country till he got it bartered for 
corn or oil, — to take a piece of leather, and thereon 
scratch or stamp the mere figure of an ox (or Pecus) ; 
put it in his pocket, and call it Pecunia, money. 
Yet hereby did barter grow sale, and the leather 
money is now golden and paper, and all miracles have 
been out-miracled ; for there are Rothschilds and 
English National Debts ; and whoso has sixpence is 
sovereign (to the length of sixpence) over all men ; 
commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach 
him, kings to mount guard over him, — to the length 
of sixpence,- — Clothes, too, which began in foolishest 
love of ornament, what have they not become! In- 
creased security and pleasurable heat soon followed; 
but what of these? Shame, divine shame (Schaam, 
Modesty), as yet a stranger to the anthropophagous 
bosom, arose there mysteriously under Clothes ; a 
mystic grove-encircled shrine for the holy in man. 
Clothes gave us individuality, distinctions, social polity. 
Clothes have made men of us ; they are threatening to 
make clothes-screens of us. 



46 ( SARTOR RESARTUS. 

" But, on the whole," continues our eloquent Pro- 
fessor, " man is a tool-using animal (Hanthierendes 
Thier). Weak in himself, and of small stature, he 
stands on a basis, at most, for the flattest-soled, of some 
half square-foot, insecurely enough ; has to straddle 
out his legs, lest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest 
of bipeds ! Three quintals are a crushing load for 
him ; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft, like a 
waste rag. Nevertheless he can use tools, can devise 
tools. With these the granite mountain melts into 
light dust before him ; he kneads glowing iron, as if it 
were soft paste ; seas are his smooth highway, winds 
and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find 
him without tools ; without tools he is nothing, with 
tools he is all." 

Here may we not, for a moment, interrupt the 
stream of oratory with a remark that this definition of 
the tool-using animal appears to us, of all that animal- 
sort, considerably the precisest and best? Man is 
called a laughing animal; but do not the apes also 
laugh, or attempt to do it; and is the manliest man 
the greatest and oftenest laugher? Teufelsdrockh 
himself, as we said, laughed only once. Still 
less do we make of that other French definition of 
the cooking animal; which, indeed, for rigorous, 
scientific purposes, is as good as useless. Can a 
Tartar be said to cook, when he only readies his 
steak by riding on it? * Again, what cookery does 
the Greenlander use, beyond stowing up his whale- 
blubber, as a marmot, in the like case, might do? 
Or how would Monsieur Ude prosper among- those 
Orinoco Indians who, according to Humboldt, lodge. 



APRONS* 47 

in crow-nests, on the branches of trees ; and, for half 
the year, have no victuals but pipe-clay, the whole 
country being under water? But, on the other hand, 
show us the human being, of any period or climate, 
without his tools ; those very Caledonians, as we saw, 
had their flint-ball, and thong to it, such as no brute 
has or can have. 

"Man is a tool-using animal," concludes Teufels- 
drockh in his abrupt way; "of which truth Clothes 
are but one example. And surely, if we consider the 
interval between the first wooden dibble fashioned by 
man, and those Liverpool steam-carriages, or the 
British House of Commons, we shall note what 
progress he has made. He digs up certain black 
stones from the bosom of the earth, and says to them, 
Transport me, and this luggage, at the rate of five- 
and-thirty miles an hour ; and they do it. He collects, 
apparently by lot, six hundred and fifty-eight miscel- 
laneous individuals, and says to them, Make this 
nation toil for us, bleed for us, hunger, and sorrow, 
and sin for us; and they do it." 



CHAPTER VI, 

APRONS. 



One of the most unsatisfactory sections in the whole 
volume is that on aprons. What though stout old 
Gao, the Persian blacksmith, " whose apron, now, 
indeed, hidden under jewels, because raised in revolt 



48 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

which proved successful, is still the royal standard 
of that country ;" what though John Knox's daughter, 
"who threatened Sovereign Majesty that she would 
catch her husband's head in her apron, rather than he 
should lie and be a bishop;" what though the Land- 
gravine Elizabeth, with many other apron worthies, 
—figure here? An idle, wiredrawing spirit, some- 
times even a tone of levity, approaching to conven- 
tional satire, is too clearly discernible. What, for 
example, are we to make of such sentences as the 
following ? 

"Aprons are defences; against injury to cleanli- 
ness, to safety, to modesty, sometimes to roguery. 
From the thin slip of notched silk (as it were, the 
emblem and beautified ghost of an apron) which 
some highestbred house wife, sitting at Niirnberg 
workboxes and toyboxes, has gracefully fastened on ; 
to the thick tanned hide, girt round him with thongs, 
wherein the builder builds, and at evening sticks his 
trowel; or to those jingling, sheet-iron aprons, 
wherein your half-naked Vulcans hammer and smelt in 
their smelt-furnace, — is there not range enough in the 
fashion and uses of this vestment? How much has been 
concealed, how much has been defended in aprons ! 
Nay, rightly considered, what is your whole military 
and police establishment, charged at uncalculated mil- 
lions, but a huge, scarlet-colored, iron-fastened apron, 
wherein society works (uneasily enough) ; guarding 
itself from some soil and stithy-sparks, in this Devil's 
smithy (Teufeh-schmeide) of a world? But of all 
aprons the most puzzling to me hitherto has been 
the Episcopal, or Cassock. Wherein consists the 



APRONS. 49 

usefulness of this apron ? The Overseer (Episcopus) 
of Souls, I notice, has tucked in the corner of it, as if 
his day's work were done ; what does he shadow forth 
thereby?" &c. &c. 

Or again, has it often been the lot of our readers to 
read such stuff as we shall now quote ? 

"I consider those printed paper aprons, worn by 
the Parisian cooks, as a new vent, though a slight 
one, for typography; therefore as an encouragement 
to modern literature, and deserving of approval ; nor 
is it without satisfaction that I hear of a celebrated 
^London firm having in view to introduce the same 
fashion, with important extensions, in England." 
— We who are on the spot hear of no such thing; 
and, indeed, have reason to be thankful that hitherto 
there are other vents for our literature, exuberant 
as it i«. — Teufelsdrockh continues: "If such supply 
of printed paper should rise so far as to choke up the 
highways and public thoroughfares, new means must 
of necessity be had recourse to. In a world existing 
by industry, we grudge to employ fire as a destroying 
element, and not as a creating one. However, Heaven 
is omnipotent, and will find us an outlet. In the mean 
while, is it not beautiful to see five million quintals 
of rags picked annually from the laystall ; and 
annually, after being macerated, hot-pressed, printed 
on, and sold, — returned thither ; filling so many 
hungry mouths by the way? Thus is the laystall, 
especially with its rags or clothes-rubbish, the grand 
electric battery, and fountain of motion, from which 
and to which the social activities (like vitreous and 
resinous electricities) circulate, in larger or smaller 

5 



50 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

circles, through the mighty, billowy, storm-tost chaos 
of life, which they keep alive!" Such passages fill 
us who love the man, and partly esteem him, with a 
very mixed feeling. 

Farther down we meet with this : " The journalists 
are now the true kings and clergy. Henceforth 
historians, unless they are fools, must write, not of 
Bourbon dynasties, and Tudors, and Hapsburgs ; but 
of stamped, broad-sheet dynasties, and quite new 
successive names, according to this or the other able 
editor, or combination of able editors, gains the 
world's ear. Of the British newspaper press, perhaps 
the most important of all, and wonderful enough in its 
secret constitution and procedure, a valuable descrip- 
tive history already exists, in that language, under the 
title of Satan's Invisible World Displayed; which, 
however, by search in all the Weissnichtwo Libraries, 
I have not yet succeeded in procuring (yermocht nicht 
aufzutreiben)." 

Thus does the good Homer not only nod, but snore. 
Thus does Teufelsdrockh, wandering in regions where 
he had little business, confound the old, authentic, 
Presbyterian Witchfinder with a new, spurious, im- 
aginary historian of the Brittische Journalistik ; and 
so stumble on perhaps the most egregious blunder in 
modern literature ! 



MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 51 

CHAPTER VII. 

MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 

Happier is our Professor, and more purely scientific 
and historic, when he reaches the middle ages in Eu- 
rope, and down to the end of the seventeenth century ; 
the true era of extravagance in costume. It is here that 
the antiquary and student of modes comes upon his 
richest harvest. Fantastic garbs, beggaring all fancy of 
a Teniers or a C allot, succeed each other, like mon- 
ster devouring monster in a dream. The whole too in 
brief, authentic strokes, and touched not seldom with 
that breath of genius which makes even old raiment 
live. Indeed, so learned, precise, graphical, and every 
way interesting have we found these chapters, that 
it may be thrown out as a pertinent question for 
parties concerned, whether or not a good English 
translation thereof might henceforth be profitably 
incorporated with Mr. Merrick's valuable work On 
Ancient Armor. Take, by way of example, the fol- 
lowing sketeh ; as authority for whieh Paulinus's 
Zeitkurzende Lust (n. 678) is, with seeming con- 
fidence, referred to : 

" Did we behold the German fashionable dress of 
the fifteenth eentury, we might smile ; as perhaps 
those by-gone Germans, were they to rise again, and 
see our haberdashery, would cross themselves, and 
invoke the Virgin. But happily no by-gone German, 
or man, rises again. Thus the present is not needlessly 
trammelled with the past ; and only giows out of it, 



52 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

like a tree whose roots are not intertangled with its 
branches, but lie peaceably under ground. Nay, it is 
very mournful, yet not useless, to see and know how the 
greatest and dearest, in a short while, would find his 
place quite filled up here, and no room for him ; the 
very Napoleon, the very Byron, in some seven years, 
has become obsolete, and were now a foreigner to his 
Europe. Thus is the law of progress secured ; and 
in Clothes, as in all other external things whatsoever, 
no fashion will continue. 

M Of the military classes in those old times, whose 
buff belts, complicated chains and gorgets, huge churn- 
boots, and other riding and fighting gear have been 
bepainted in modern romance, till the whole has 
acquired somewhat of a signpost character, I shall 
here say nothing; the civil and pacific classes, less 
touched upon, are wonderful enough for us. 

" Rich men, I find, have Teusinke" (a perhaps un- 
translatable article); "also a silver girdle, whereat 
hang little bells ; so that when a man walks it is with 
continual jingling. Some few, of musical turn, have 
a whole chime of bells {Glockenspiel) fastened there; 
which especially, in sudden whirls, and the other 
accidents of walking, has a grateful effect. Observe 
too how fond they are of peaks, and Gothic-arch in- 
tersections. The male world wears peaked caps, an 
ell long, which hang bobbing over the side (schief) ; 
their shoes are peaked in front, also to the length of 
an ell (and laced on the side with tags); even the 
wooden shoes have their ell-long noses ; some also 
clap bells on the peak. Further, according to my 
authority, the men have breeches without seat (ohne 



MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 53 

Gesciss) ; these they fasten peakwise to their shirts ; 
and the long, round doublet must overlap them. 

u Rich maidens, again, flit abroad in gowns scol- 
loped out behind and before, so that back and breast 
are almost bare. Wives of quality, on the other hand, 
have train-gowns four or five ells in length ; which 
trains there are boys to carry. Brave Cleopatras 
sailing in their silk-cloth galley, with a Cupid for 
steersman ! Consider their welts, a handbreadth thick, 
which waver round them by way of hem ; the long 
flood of silver buttons, or rather silver shells, from 
throat to shoe, wherewith these same welt-gowns are 
buttoned. The maidens have bound silver snoods 
about their hair, with gold spangles, and pendent 
flames (Flammen), that is, sparkling hair-drops ; but of 
their mother's headgear who shall speak ? Neither 
in love of grace is comfort forgotten. In winter 
weather you behold the whole fair creation (that can 
afford it) in long mantles, with skirts wide below, 
and, for hem, not one but two sufficient handbroad 
welts ; all ending atop in a thick, well starched ruff, 
some twenty inches broad ; these are their ruff-mantles 
[Kragenm'dntel). 

" As yet among the womankind hoop-petticoats are 
not ; but the men have doublets of fustian, under 
which lie multiple ruffs of cloth, pasted together with 
batter (mit Teig zusammengekleistert), which create 
protuberance enough. Thus do the two sexes vie 
with each other in the art of decoration ; and, as usual, 
the stronger carries it." 

Our Professor, whether he have humor himself or 
not, manifests a certain feeling of the ludicrous, a sly 

5* 



54 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

observance of it, which, could emotion of any kind be 
confidently predicated of so still a man, we might call 
a real love. None of those bell-girdles, bushel- 
breeches, cornuted shoes, or other the like phenomena, 
of which the history of dress offers so many, escape 
him ; more especially, the mischances, or striking 
adventures, incident to the wearers of such, are 
noticed with due fidelity. Sir Walter Raleigh's fine 
mantle, which he spread in the mud under Queen 
Elizabeth's feet, appears to provoke little enthusiasm 
in him ; he merely asks, Whether at that period the 
Maiden Queen " was red-painted on the nose, and 
white-painted on the cheeks, as her tirewomen, when 
from spleen and wrinkles she would no longer look in 
any glass, were wont to serve her?" We can answer 
that Sir Walter knew well what he was doing, and 
had the Maiden Queen been stuffed parchment dyed 
in verdigris, would have done the same. 

Thus too, treating of those enormous habiliments, 
that were not only slashed and gallooned, but artifi- 
cially swollen out on the broader parts of the body, by 
introduction of bran, — our Professor fails not to com- 
ment on that luckless courtier, who, having seated 
himself on a chair with some projecting nail on it, and 
therefrom rising to pay his devoir on the entrance of 
Majesty, instantaneously emitted several pecks of dry 
wheat-dust ; and stood there diminished to a spindle, 
his galloons and slashes dangling sorrowful and flabby 
round him. Whereupon the Professor publishes this 
reflection : 

" By what strange chances do we live in history ! 
Erostratus by a torch ; Milo by a bullock ; Henry 



MISCELLANEOUS-HISTORICAL. 55 

Darnley, an unfledged booby and bustard, by his 
limbs ; most kings and queens by being born under 
such and such a bedtester ; Boileau Despreaux (ac- 
cording to Helvetius) by the peck of a turkey ; and 
this ill-starred individual by a rent in his breeches, — 
for no memoirist of Kaiser Otto's court omits him. 
Vain was the prayer of Themistocles for a talent of 
forgetting. My friends, yield cheerfully to destiny, 
and read since it is written." — Has Teufelsdrockh to 
be put in mind that, nearly related to the impossible 
talent of forgetting, stands that talent of silence, which 
even travelling Englishmen manifest ? 

" The simplest costume," observes our "Professor, 
" which I anywhere find alluded to in history, is that 
used as regimental by Bolivar's cavalry, in the late 
Colombian wars. A square blanket, twelve feet in 
diagonal, is provided (some were wont to cut off the 
corners, and make it circular) ; in the centre a slit is 
effected, eighteen inches long ; through this the mother- 
naked trooper introduces his head and neck ; and so 
rides shielded from all weather, and in battle from 
many strokes (for he rolls it about his left arm) ; and 
not only dressed, but harnessed and draperied." 

With which picture of a state of nature, affecting by 
its singularity, and Old-Roman contempt of the super- 
fluous, we shall quit this part of our subject. 



56 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 

If in the descriptive-historical portion of his volume, 
Teufelsdrockh, discussing merely the Werden (origin 
and successive improvement) of Clothes, has astonished 
many a reader, much more will he in the speculative- 
philosophical portion, which treats of their Wirken, 
or influences. It is here that the present Editor first 
feels the pressure of his task ; for here properly the 
higher and new philosophy of Clothes commences ; 
an untried, almost inconceivable region, or chaos ; in 
venturing upon which, how difficult, yet how unspeak- 
ably important is it to know what course of survey 
and conquest is the true one ; where the footing is 
firm substance and will bear us, where it is hollow, 
or mere cloud, and may engulf us t Teufelsdrockh 
undertakes no less than to expound the moral, political, 
even religious influences of Clothes. He undertakes 
to make manifest, in its thousandfold bearings, this 
grand proposition, that man*s earthly interests " are 
all hooked and buttoned together and held up by 
Clothes." He says, in so many words, " Society is 
founded upon cloth ;" and again, " Society sails through 
the infinitude on cloth, as on a Faust's mantle, or rather 
like the sheet of clean and unclean beasts in the 
Apostle's dream ; and without such sheet or mantle, 
would sink to endless depths, or mount to inane 
limbos, and in either case be no more." 

By what chains, or, indeed, infinitely complected 
tissues of meditation this grand theorem is here 



THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 57 

unfolded, and innumerable practical corollaries are 
drawn therefrom, it were perhaps a mad ambition to 
attempt exhibiting. Our Professor's method is not, in 
any case, that of common school logic, where the 
truths stand all in a row, each holding by the skirts 
of the other; but, at best, that of practical reason, 
proceeding by large intuition over whole systematic 
groups and kingdoms ; whereby we might say a noble 
complexity, almost like that of nature, reigns in his 
philosophy, or spiritual picture of nature; a mighty 
maze, yet, as faith whispers, not without a plan. Nay, 
we complained above, that a certain ignoble com- 
plexity, what we must call mere confusion, was also 
discernible. Often, too, must we exclaim: Would 
to heaven those same biographical documents were 
come ! For it seems as if the demonstration lay much 
in the author's individuality ; as if it were not argu- 
ment that had taught him, but experience. At present 
it is only in local glimpses, and by significant frag- 
ments, picked often at wide enough intervals from 
the original volume, and carefully collated, that we 
can hope to impart some outline or foreshadow of this 
doctrine. Readers of any intelligence are once more 
invited to favor us with their most concentrated atten- 
tion. Let these, after intense consideration, and not 
till then, pronounce, whether on the utmost verge of 
our actual horizon there is not a looming as of land ; a 
promise of new Fortunate Islands, perhaps whole un- 
discovered Americas, for such as have canvass to sail 
thither? — As exordium to the whole, stands here the 
following long citation : 



58 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

" With men of a speculative turn," writes Teufels- 
drockh, " there come seasons, meditative, sweet, 
yet awful hours, when in wonder and fear you ask 
yourself that unanswerable question : Who am I; 
the thing that can say * I ' (das Wesen das sich Ich 
nennt)? The world, with its loud trafficking, retires 
into the distance; and through the paper-hangings, 
and stone-walls, and thick-piled tissues of commerce 
and polity, and all the living and lifeless integuments 
(of society and a body), wherewith your existence sits 
surrounded,—- the sight reaches forth into the void 
deep, and you are alone with the universe, and silently 
commune with it, as one mysterious presence with 
another. 

" Who am I ; what is this Me ? A voice, a motion, 
an appearance ; — some embodied, visualized idea in 
the Eternal Mind? Cogito, ergo sum. Alas, poor 
cogitator, this takes us but a little way. Sure enough, 
I am ; and lately was not. But whence ? How ? 
Whereto ? The answer lies around, written in all 
colors and motions, uttered in all tones of jubilee and 
wail, in thousand-figured, thousand-voiced, harmonious 
nature ; but where is the cunning eye and ear to 
whom that God-written apocalypse will yield articulate 
meaning ? We sit as in a boundless phantasmagoria 
and dream-grotto ; boundless, for the faintest star, the 
remotest century, lies not even nearer the verge 
thereof. Sounds and many-colored visions flit round 
our sense ; but Him, the Unslumbering, whose work 
both dream and dreamer are, we see not ; except in 
rare, half^waking moments, suspect not. Creation, 
says one, lies before us like a glorious rainbow ; but 



THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 59 

the sun that made it lies behind us, hidden from us. 
Then in that strange dream, how we clutch at sha- 
dows as if they were substances ; and sleep deepest 
while fancying ourselves most awake ! Which of 
your philosophical systems is other than a dream 
theorem ; a net quotient, confidently given out, where 
divisor and dividend are both unknown ? What are 
all your national wars, with their Moscow retreats, 
and sanguinary, hate-filled revolutions, but the som- 
nambulism of uneasy sleepers ? This dreaming, this 
somnambulism is what we on earth call life ; wherein 
the most, indeed, undoubtingly wander, as if they knew 
right hand from left ; yet they only are wise who know 
that they know nothing. 

" Pity that all metaphysics had hitherto proved so in- 
expressibly unproductive ! The secret of man's being 
is still like the Sphinx's secret : a riddle that he cannot 
rede ; and for ignorance of which he suffers death, the 
worse death, a spiritual. What are your axioms, and 
categories, and systems, and aphorisms ? Words, words. 
High air-castles are cunningly built of words, the 
words well bedded also in good logic-mortar; wherein, 
however, no knowledge will come to lodge. The 
whole is greater than the part: how exceedingly tiue! 
Nature abhors a vacuum: how exceedingly false and 
calumnious ! Again, Nothing can act but where it is: 
with all my heart; only where is it? Be not the 
slave of words ; is not the distant, the dead, while I 
love it, and long for it, and mourn for it, here, in the 
genuine sense, as truly as the floor I stand on ? But 
that same where, with its brother when, are from 
the first the master-colors of our dream-grotto; say 



60 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

rather, the canvass (the warp and woof thereof) 

whereon all our dreams and life-visions are painted. 

Nevertheless, has not a deeper meditation taught 

certain of every climate and age, that the wherb and 

when, so mysteriously inseparable from all our 

thoughts, are but superficial terrestrial, adhesions to 

thought; that the seer may discern them where they 

mount up out of the celestial everywhere and 

forever? Have not all nations conceived their God 

as Omnipresent and Eternal ; as existing in a universal 

here, and everlasting now? Think well, thou too 

wilt find that space is but a mode of our human sense, 

so likewise time ; there is no space and no time ; we 

are — we know not what; — light sparkles floating in 

the aether of Deity! 

" So that this so solid-seeming world, after all, were 
but an air image, our me the only reality ; and nature, 
with its thousandfold production and destruction, but 
the reflex of our own inward force, the ' phantasy of 
our dream ;' or what the Earth-spirit in Faust names 
it, the living, visible garment of God : 

1 In being's floods, in action's storm, 
I walk and work, above, beneath, 
Work and weave in endless motion ! 
Birth and death, » 

An infinite ocean ; 
A seizing and giving 
The fire of the living : 
'Tis thus at the roaring loom of time I ply, 
And weave for God the garment thou seest him by.' 

Of twenty millions that have read and spouted this 
thunder-speech of the Erdgeist, are there yet twenty 
units of us that have learned the meaning thereof?" 



THE WORLD OUT OF CLOTHES. 61 

"It was in some such mood, when wearied and 
foredone with these high speculations, that I first 
came upon the question of Clothes. Strange enough, 
it strikes me, is this same fact of there being tailors 
and tailored. The horse I ride has his own whole 
fell ; strip him of the girths and flaps and extraneous 
tags I have fastened round him, and the noble crea- 
ture is his own sempster and weaver and spinner, nay, 
his own boot-maker, jeweller, and man-milliner; he 
bounds free through the valleys, with a perennial rain- 
proof court-suit on his body ; wherein warmth and 
easiness of fit have reached perfection ; nay, the 
graces also have been considered, and frills and 
fringes, with gay variety of color, featly appended, 
and ever in the right place, are not wanting. While 
I — good heaven! — have thatched myself over with 
the dead fleeces of sheep, the bark of vegetables, the 
entrails of worms, the hides of oxen or seals, the felt 
of furred beasts ; and walk abroad a moving rag-screen, 
overheaped with shreds and tatters raked from the 
charnel-house of nature, where they would have rotted, 
to rot on me more slowly ! Day after day, I must 
thatch myself anew; day after day, this despicable 
thatch must lose some film of its thickness ; some film 
of it, frayed away by tear and wear, must be brushed 
off into the ashpit, into the laystall ; till by degrees 
the whole has been brushed thither, and I, the dust- 
making, patent rag-grinder, get new material to grind 
down. O subter-brutish ! vile ! most vile ! For have 
not I, too, a compact, all-enclosing skin, whiter or 
dingier ? Am I a botched mass of tailors' and cobblers' 

6 



62 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

shreds, then; or a tightly-articulated, homogeneous 
little figure, automatic, nay, alive ? 

" Strange enough how creatures of the human-kind 
shut their eyes to plainest facts ; and, by the mere 
inertia of oblivion and stupidity, live at ease in the 
midst of wonders and terrors ! But, indeed, man is, 
and was always, a blockhead and dullard ; much 
readier to feel and digest than to think and consider. 
Prejudice, which he pretends to hate, is his absolute 
lawgiver; mere use-and-wont everywhere leads him 
by the nose ; thus, let but a rising of the sun, let but 
a creation of the world happen twice, and it ceases to 
be marvellous, to be noteworthy, or noticeable. Per- 
haps not once in a life-time does it occur to your 
ordinary biped, of any country or generation, be he 
gold-mantled prince or russet-jerkined peasant, that his 
vestments and his self are not one and indivisible ; that 
he is naked, without vestments, till he buy or steal such, 
and by forethought sew and button them. 

"For my own part, these considerations, of our 
Clothesthatch, and how, reaches inwards even to our 
heart of hearts, it tailorizes and demoralizes us, fill me 
with a certain horror at myself and mankind ; almost 
as one feels at those Dutch cows, which, during the 
wet season, you see grazing deliberately with jackets 
and petticoats (of striped sacking), in the meadows of 
Gouda. Nevertheless there is something great in the 
moment when a man first strips himself of adventitious 
wrappages ; and sees indeed that he is naked, and, as 
Swift has it, ' a forked, straddling animal, with bandy 
legs ;' yet also a spirit, and unutterable mystery of 
mysteries." 



ADAMITISM. 63 



CHAPTER IX. 



ADAMITISM. 



Let no courteous reader take offence at the opin- 
ions broached in the conclusion of the last chapter. 
The Editor himself, on first glancing over that singu- 
lar passage, was inclined to exclaim : What, have we 
got not only a Sansculottist, but an enemy to Clothes 
in the abstract ; a new Adamite, in this century, which 
flatters itself that it is the nineteenth, and destructive 
both to superstition and enthusiasm ? 

Consider thou foojish Teufelsdrockh, what benefits 
unspeakable all ages and sexes derive from Clothes. 
For example when thou thyself, a watery, pulpy, 
slobbery freshman and new comer in this planet, 
sattest muling and puking in thy nurse's arms ; suck- 
ing thy coral, and looking forth into the world in the 
blankest manner, what hadst thou been, without thy 
blankets, and bibs, and other nameless hulls? A ter- 
ror to thyself and mankind ! Or hast thou forgotten 
the day when thou first receivedst breeches, and thy 
long clothes became short ? The village where thou 
livedst was all apprized of the fact; and neighbour 
after neighbour kissed thy pudding-cheek, and gave 
thee, as handsel, silver or copper coins, on that the 
first gala-day of thy existence. Again, wert not thou, 
at one period of life, a buck, or blood, or macaroni, or 
incroyable, or dandy, or by whatever name, according 
to year and place, such phenomenon is distinguished ? 
In that one word lie included mysterious volumes. 



64 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Nay, now when the reign of folly is over, or altered, 
and thy clothes are not for triumph but for defence, hast 
thou always worn them perforce, and as a consequence 
of man's fall : never rejoiced in them, as in a warm, 
moveable house, a body round thy body, wherein that 
strange thee of thine sat snug, defying all variations 
of climate ? Girt with thick double-milled kerseys ; 
half buried under shawls and broadbrims, and overalls 
and mudboots, thy very fingers cased in doeskin and 
mittens, thou hast bestrode that "horse I ride;" and 
though it were in wild winter, dashed through the 
world, glorying in it as if thou wert its lord. In vain 
did the sleet beat round they temples ; it lighted only 
on thy impenetrable, felted or woven, case of wool. 
In vain did the winds howl, — forests sounding and 
creaking, deep calling unto deep, — and the storms 
heap themselves together into one huge arctic whirl- 
pool ; thou newest through the middle thereof, striking 
fire from the highway ; wild music hummed in thy 
ears, thou too wert as a " sailor of the air ;" the wreck 
of matter and the crash of worlds were thy element and 
propitiously wafting tide. Without Clothes, without 
bit or saddle, what hadst thou been ; what had thy 
fleet quadruped been ? — Nature is good, but she is not 
the best ; here, truly, was the victory of art over nature. 
A thunderbolt, indeed, might have pierced thee ; all 
short of this thou couldst defy. 

Or, cries the courteous reader, has your Teufels- 
drockh forgotten what he said lately about " aboriginal 
savages," and their " condition miserable indeed" ? 
Would he have all this unsaid ; and us betake our- 
selves again to the " matted cloak," and go sheeted in 
a " thick natural fell ?" 



ADAMITISM. 65 

Nowise, courteous reader! The Professor knows 
full well what he is saying ; and both thou and we, in 
our haste, do him wrong. If Clothes in these times, 
"so tailorize and demoralize us," have they no 
redeeming value; can they not be altered to serve 
better ; must they of necessity be thrown to the dogs ? 
The truth is, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sansculottist, 
is no Adamite ; and much perhaps as he might wish 
to go forth before this degenerate age "as a sign," 
would nowise wish to do it, as those old Adamites did, 
in a state of nakedness. The utility of Clothes is 
altogether apparent to him ; nay, perhaps he has an 
insight into their more recondite, and almost mystic 
qualities, what we might call the omnipotent virtue of 
Clothes, such as was never before vouchsafed to any 
man. For example : 

" You see two individuals," he writes, " one dressed 
in fine red, the other in coarse threadbare blue. Red 
says to blue, ' be hanged and anatomized.' Blue hears 
with a shudder, and.(0 wonder of wonders!) marches 
sorrowfully to the gallows ; is there noosed up, vibrates 
his hour, and the surgeons dissect him, and fit his 
bones into a skeleton for medical purposes. How is 
this ; or what make ye of your nothing can act bitf 
where it is? Red has no physical hold of blue, no 
clutch of him, is nowise in contact with him. Neither 
are those ministering sheriffs and lord-lieutenants and 
hangmen and tipstaves so related to commanding red, 
that he can tug them hither and thither; but each 
stands distinct within his own skin. Nevertheless, as 
it is spoken, so is it done ; the articulate word sets all 

6* 



66 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 



hands in action ; and rope and improved drop perform 
their work. 

" Thinking reader, the reason seems to me twofold : 
First, that man is a spirit, and bound by invisible bonds 
to all men; Secondly, that he wears clothes, which are 
the visible emblems of that fact. Has not your red 
hanging individual, a horsehair wig, squirrel skins, and 
a plush gown ; whereby all mortals know that he is a 
Judge ? — Society, which the more I think of it aston- 
ishes me the more, is founded upon cloth. 

Often in my atribiliar moods, when I read of pom- 
pous ceremonials, Frankfort coronations, royal draw- 
ingrooms, levees, couchees ; and how the ushers and 
macers and pursuivants are all in waiting ; how Duke 
this is presented by Archduke that, and Colonel A 
by General B ; and innumerable bishops, admirals, 
and miscellaneous functionaries, are advancing gallantly 
to the Anointed Presence ; and I strive, in my remote 
privacy, to form a clear picture of that solemnity, — 
on a sudden, as by some enchanter's wand, the — 
shall I speak it ? — the Clothes fly off the whole dra- 
matic corps ; and dukes, grandees, bishops, generals, 
Anointed Presence itself, every mother's son of them, 
stand straddling there, not a shirt on them ; and I know 
not whether to laugh or weep. This physical or 
psychical infirmity, in which perhaps I am not singular, 
T have, after hesitation, thought right to publish, for 
the solace of those afflicted with the like." 

Would to heaven, say we, thou hadst thought right 
to keep it secret ! Who is there now that can read 
the five columns of presentations in his morning news- 
paper without a shudder ? Hypochondriac men, and 



ADAMITISM. 67 

all men are to a certain extent hypochondriac, should 
be more gently treated. With what readiness our 
fancy, in this shattered state of the nerves, follows out 
the consequences which Teufelsdrockh, with a devilish 
coolness, goes on to draw : 

"What would Majesty do, could such an accident 
befall in reality ; should the buttons all simultaneously 
start, and the solid wool evaporate, in very deed, as 
here in dream ? Ach Gott! How each skulks into the 
nearest hiding-place ! Their high state tragedy (Haupt- 
und St aats- Action) becomes a pickleherring-farce to 
weep at, which is the worst kind of farce. The tables 
(according to Horace), and with them, the whole fabric 
of government, legislation, property, police, and civil- 
ized society, are dissolved, in wails and howls." 

Lives the man that can figure a naked Duke of 
Windlestraw addressing a naked House of Lords? 
Imagination, choked as in mephitic air, recoils on 
itself, and will not forward with the picture. The 
woolsack, the ministerial, the opposition benches — 
infandum! infandum! And yet why is the thing 
impossible ? t Was not every soul, or rather every 
body of these guardians of our liberties, naked, or 
nearly so, last night; "a forked radish, with ahead 
fantastically carved ?" And why might he not, did 
our stern fate so order it, walk out to St. Stephen's, 
as well as into bed, in that no-fashion; and there, 
with other similar radishes, hold a bed of justice? 
" Solace of those afflicted with the like !" Unhappy 
Teufelsdrockh, had man ever such a " physical or 
psychical infirmity" before ? And now how many, 
perhaps, may thy unparalleled confession (which we, 



68 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

even to the sounder British world, and goaded on by 
critical and biographical duty, grudge to re-impart) 
incurably infect therewith ! Art thou the malignest of 
Sansculottists, or only the maddest ! 

" It will remain to be examined," adds the inexora- 
ble Teufelsdrockh, in how far the scarecrow, as a 
clothed person, is not also entitled to benefit of 
clergy, and English trial by jury ; nay, perhaps, con- 
sidering his high function (for is not he, too, a defender 
of property, and sovereign armed with the terrors of 
the law ?), to a certain royal immunity and inviola- 
bility ; which however, misers and the meaner class 
of persons are not always voluntarily disposed to grant 
him." ********* 
* * a o my friends, we are (in Yorick 

Sterne's words) but as * turkeys driven, with a stiek 
and red clout, to the market;' or if some drivers, as 
they do in Norfolk, take a dried bladder and put peas 
in it, the rattle thereof terrifies the boldest !" 



CHAPTER X. 

PURE REASON. 

It must now be apparent enough that our Professor, 
as above hinted, is a speculative radical, and of the 
very darkest tinge; acknowledging, for most part, in 
the solemnities and paraphernalia of civilized life, 
which we make so much of, nothing but so many 
cloth-rags, turkey-poles, and " bladders with dried 



PURE REASON. 69 

peas." To linger among such speculations, longer 
than mere science requires, a discerning public can 
have no wish. For our purposes, the simple fact that 
such a naked world is possible, nay, actually exists 
(under the clothed one), will be sufficient. Much, 
therefore, we omit about " kings wrestling naked on 
the green with carmen," and the kings being thrown. 
" Dissect them with scalpels," says Teufelsdrockh, 
"the same viscera, tissues, livers, lights, and other 
life-tackle are there; examine their spiritual mechan- 
ism, the same great need, great greed, and little 
faculty; nay, ten to one but the carmen, who under- 
stands draught-cattle, the rimming of wheels, some- 
thing of the laws of unstable and stable equilibrium, 
with other branches of wagon-science, and has actually 
put forth his hand and operated on nature, is the more 
cunningly gifted of the two. Whence, then, their so 
unspeakable difference ? From Clothes." Much, also, 
we shall omit about confusion of ranks, and Joan and 
my lady, and how it would be everywhere "hail- 
fellow well met," and chaos were come again; all 
which, to any one that has once fairly pictured out the* 
grand mother-idea, society in a state of nakedness t 
will spontaneously suggest itself. Should some skep- 
tical individual still entertain doubts whether, in a world 
without Clothes, the smallest politeness, polity, or even 
police, could exist, let him turn to the original volume, 
and view there the boundless Serbonian bogs of Sans- 
culottism, stretching sour and pestilential ; over which 
we have lightly flown ; where not only whole armies, 
but whole nations might sink ! If, indeed, the follow- 
ing argument, in its brief, riveting emphasis, be not of 
itself incontrovertible and final : 






70 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

"Are we opossums? have we natural pouches, like 
the kangaroo? Or how, without Clothes, could we 
possess the master-organ, soul's-seat, and true pineal 
gland of the body social: I mean a purse?" 

Nevertheless it is impossible to hate Professor 
Teufelsdrockh; at worst, one knows not whether to 
hate or to love him. For though in looking at the 
fair tapestry of human life, with its royal and 
even sacred figures, he dwells not on the obverse 
alone, but here chiefly on the reverse; and, indeed, 
turns out the rough seams, tatters, and manifold 
thrums of that unsightly wrong-side with an almost 
diabolical patience and indifference, which must have 
sunk him in the estimation of most readers,-— there 
is that within which unspeakably distinguishes him 
from all other past and present Sansculottists. The 
grand, unparalleled peculiarity of Teufelsdrockh, is 
that with this deseendentalism he combines a trans- 
cendentalism no less superlative ; whereby if, on the 
one hand, he degrade man below most animals, except 
those jacketed Gouda cows, he, on the other, exalts 
him beyond the visible heavens, almost to an equality 
with the gods. 

" To the eye of vulgar logic," says he, " what is 
man? An omnivorous biped that wears breeches. 
To the eye of pure reason what is he? A soul, a 
spirit, and divine apparition. Round his mysterious 
me, there lies, under all those wool-rags, a garment of 
flesh (or of senses), contextured in the loom of heaven ; 
whereby he is revealed to his like, and dwells with 
them in union and division; and sees and fashions 
for himself a universe, with azure, starry spaces, and 



PURE REASON. 71 

long thousands of years. Deep hidden is he under 
that strange garment; amid sounds and colors and 
forms ; as it were, swathed in, and inextricably over- 
shrouded ; yet is it sky-woven, and worthy of a God. 
Stands he not thereby in the centre of immensities, in 
the conflux of eternities ? He feels ; power has been 
given him to know, to believe ; nay, does not the spirit 
of love, free in its celestial, primeval brightness, even 
here, though but for moments, look through? Well 
said Saint Chrysostom, with his lips of gold, ' the true 
siiEKiNAH is man ;' where else is the God's-presence 
manifested, not to our eyes only, but to our hearts, as 
in our fellow-man?" 

In such passages, unhappily too rare, the high 
Platonic mysticism of our author, which is perhaps 
the fundamental element of his nature, bursts forth, as 
it were, in full flood ; and through all the vapor and 
tarnish of what is often so perverse, so mean in his 
exterior and environment, we seem to look into a whole 
inward sea of light and love ; though alas, the grim, 
coppery clouds soon roll together again, and hide it 
from view. 

Such tendency to mysticism is everywhere tra6e- 
able in this man; and, indeed, to attentive readers 
must have been long ago apparent. Nothing that he 
sees but has more than a common meaning, but has 
two meanings. Thus, if in the highest imperial sceptre 
and Charlemagne-mantle, as well as in the poorest ox- 
goad and gipsy-blanket, he finds prose, decay, con- 
temptibility ; there is in each sort poetry also, and a 
reverend worth. For matter, were it never so des- 
picable, is spirit, the manifestation of spirit ; were it 



72 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

never so honorable, can it be more ? The thing visi- 
ble, nay, the thing imagined, the thing in any way 
conceived as visible, what, is it but a garment, a 
clothing of the higher, celestial, invisible, "unimag- 
inable, formless, dark with excess of bright?" Under 
which point of view the following passage, so strange 
in purport, so strange in phrase, seems characteristic 
enough : 

" The beginning of all wisdom is to look fixedly on 
Clothes, or even with armed eyesight, till they become 
transparent. 'The philosopher,' says the wisest of 
this age, « must station himself in the middle.' How 
true ! The philosopher is he to whom the highest has. 
descended, and the lowest has mounted up; who is the 
equal and kindly brother of all. 

"Shall we tremble before clothwebs and cobwebs, 
whether woven in Arkwright looms, or by the silent 
Arachnes that weave unrestingly in our imagination? 
Or on the other hand, what is there that we cannot 
love ; since all was created by God ? 

"Happy he who can look through the Clothes of a 
man (the woollen, and fleshly, and official bank-paper 
and state-paper Clothes), into the man himself; and 
discern, it may be, in this or the other dread potentate, 
a moie or less incompetent digestive apparatus ; yet also 
an inscrutable, venerable mystery, in the meanest tinker 
that sees with eyes !" 

For the rest, as is natuial to a man of this kind, he 
deals much in the feeling of wonder ; insists on the 
necessity and high worth of universal wonder, which he 
holds to be the only reasonable temper for the denizen 
of so singular a planet as ours. " Wonder," says he, 



PURE REASON. 73 

" is the basis of worship. The reign of wonder is peren- 
nial, indestructible in man; only at certain stages (as 
the present), it is, for some short season, a reign in 
partibus infidelium" That progress of science, which 
is to destroy wonder, and in its stead substitute men- 
suration and numeration, finds small favor with Teu- 
-felsdrockh, much as he otherwise venerates these two 
latter processes. 

" Shall your science," exclaims he, " proceed in 
the small, chink-lighted, or even oil-lighted, under- 
ground workshop of logic alone ; and man's mind 
become an arithmetical mill, whereof memory is the 
hopper, and mere tables of sines and tangents, codi- 
fication, and treatises of what you call political econo- 
my, are the meal ? And what is that science, which 
the scientific head alone, were it screwed off, and (like 
the Doctor's in the Arabian Tale) set in a basin to keep 
it alive, could prosecute without shadow of a heart, — 
but one other of the mechanical and menial handi- 
crafts, for which the scientific head (having a soul 
in it) is too noble an organ ? I mean that thought 
without reverence is barren, perhaps poisonous ; at best, 
dies, like cookery, with the day that called it forth ; 
does not live, like sowing, in successive tilths and 
wider-spreading harvests, bringing food and plenteous 
increase to all time." 

In such wise does Teufelsdrockh deal hits, harder 
or softer, according to ability ; yet ever, as we would 
fain persuade ourselves, with charitable intent. Above 
all, that class of "logic-choppers, and treble-pipe scof- 
fers, and professed enemies to wonder; who, in these 
days, so numerously patrol as night-constables about 

7 



74 SARTOR RESARTUS_. 

the Mechanics' Institute of Science, and cackle, like 
true Old-Roman geese and goslings round their Capi- 
tol, on any alarm, or on none ; nay, who often as illu- 
minated skeptics, walk abroad into peaceable society, 
in full day-light, with rattle and lantern, and insist on 
guiding you and guarding you therewith, though the 
sun is shining, and the street populous with mere jus- 
tice-loving men :" that whole class is inexpressibly 
wearisome to him. Hear with what uncommon anima- 
tion he perorates : 

" The man who cannot wonder, who does not 
habitually wonder (and worship), were he president of 
innumerable Royal Societies, and cairied the whole 
Mecanique Celeste and HegeVs Philosophy, and the 
epitome of all laboratories and observatories with 
their results, in his single head, — is but a pair of 
spectacles behind which there is no eye. Let those 
who have eyes look through him, then he may be 
useful. 

" Thou wilt have no mystery and mysticism ; wilt 
walk through thy world by the sunshine of what thou 
callest truth, or even by the handlamp of what I call 
attorney-logic ; and * explain' all, ' account' for all, 
or believe nothing of it ? Nay, thou wilt attempt 
laughter ; whoso recognises the unfathomable, all- 
pervading domain of mystery, which is everywhere 
under our feet and among our hands ; to whom the 
universe is an oiacle and temple, as well as a kitchen 
and cattle-stall,' — he shall be a (delirious) mystic ; 
to him thou, with sniffing charity, wilt protrusively 
proffer thy handlamp, and shriek, as one injured, when 
he kicks his foot through it? Armer Teufel! Doth not 



PROSPECTIVE. 75 

thy cow calve, doth not thy bull gender ? Thou, thy- 
self, wert thou not born, wilt thou not die ? ' Explain' 
me all this, or do one of two things : retire into private 
places with thy foolish cackle ; or, what were better, 
give it up, and weep not that the ieign of wonder is 
done, and God's world all disembellished and prosaic, 
but that thou hitherto art a dilettante and sandblind 
pedant." 



CHAPTER XI. 

PROSPECTIVE. 

The Philosophy of Clothes is now to all readers, as 
we predicted it would do, unfolding itself into new, 
boundless expansions, of a cloudcapt, almost chi- 
merical aspect, yet not without azure loomings in 
the far distance, and streaks as of an Elysian bright- 
ness ; the highly questionable purport and promise 
of which it is becoming more and more important for 
us to ascertain. Is that a real Elysian brightness, cries 
many a timid wayfarer, or the reflex of Pandemonian 
lava ? Is it of a truth leading us into beatific aspho- 
del meadows, or the yellow-burning marl of a hell on 
earth ? 

Our Professor, like other mystics, whether delirious 
or inspired, gives an editor enough to do. Ever higher 
and dizzier are the heights he leads us to ; more pierc- 
ing, all-comprehending, all-confounding are his views 
and glances. For example, this, of nature being not an 
■aggregate, but a whole : 



76 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

" Well sang the Hebrew Psalmist ; ' If I take the 
wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts 
of the universe, God is there !' Thou too, O cultivated 
reader, who too probably art no psalmist, but a 
prosaist, knowing God only by tradition, knowest 
thou any corner of the world where at least force is 
not ? The drop, which thou shakest from thy wet 
hand, rests not where it falls, but to-morrow thou 
findest it swept away ; already, on the wings of the 
north wind, it is nearing the tropic of Cancer. How 
came it to evaporate, and not lie motionless ? Thinkest 
thou there is aught motionless, without force, and ut- 
terly dead ? 

"As I rode through the Schwarzwald, I said to 
myself : That little fire, which glows star-like across 
the dark-growing (nachtende) moor, where the sooty 
smith bends over his anvil, and thou hopest to re- 
place thy lost horseshoe, — is it a detached, separated 
speck, cut off from the whole universe ; or indissolubly 
joined to the whole ? Thou fool, that smithy-fire was 
(primarily) kindled at the sun ; is fed by air that cir- 
culates from before Noah's Deluge, from beyond the 
dogstar ; therein, with iron force, and coal force, and 
the far stronger force of man, are cunning affinities 
and battles and victories of force brought about ; it is 
a little ganglion, or nervous centre, in the great vital 
system of immensity. Call it, if thou wilt, an uncon- 
scious altar, kindled on the bosom of the All ; whose 
iron sacrifice, whose iron smoke and influence reach 
quite through the All ; whose dingy priest, not by word, 
yet by brain and sinew, preaches forth the mystery of 
force ; nay preaches forth (exoterically enough) one 



PROSPECTIVE. 77 

little textlet from the gospel of freedom, the gospel of 
man's force, commanding, and one day to be all-com- 
manding. 

" Detached, separated! I say there is no such 
separation. Nothing hitherto was ever stranded, cast 
aside; but all, were it only a withered leaf, works 
together with all ; is borne forward on the bottomless, 
shoreless flood of action, and lives through perpetual 
metamorphoses. The withered leaf is not dead and 
lost ; there are forces in it and around it, though work- 
ing in inverse order ; else how could it rot ? Despise 
not the rag from which man makes paper, or the litter 
from which the earth makes corn. Rightly viewed, 
no meanest object is insignificant; all objects are as 
windows, through which the philosophic eye looks into 
infinitude itself." 

Again, leaving that wondrous Schwarzwald smithy- 
altar, what vacant, high-sailing air-ships are these, and 
whither will they sail with us ? 

" All visible things are emblems ; what thou seest 
is not there on its own account; strictly taken, is not 
there at all ; matter exists only spiritually, and to 
represent some idea, and body it forth. Hence Clothes, 
as despicable as we think them, are so unspeakably 
significant. Clothes, from the king's mantle down- 
wards, are emblematic, not of want only, but of a 
manifold cunning victory over want. On the other 
hand, all emblematic things are properly Clothes, 
thought-woven or hand-woven. Must not the imagina- 
tion weave garments, visible bodies, wherein the else 
invisible creations and inspirations of our reason are, 
like spirits, revealed, and first become all-powerful ; — 






78 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the rather if, as we often see, the hand, too, aid her, 
and (by wool-clothes or otherwise) reveal such even 
to the outward eye ? 

44 Men are properly said to be clothed with authority, 
clothed with beauty, with curses, and the like. Nay, 
if you consider it, what is man himself, and his whole 
terrestrial life, but an emblem ; a clothing or visible gar- 
ment for that divine me of his, cast hither, like a light 
particle, down from heaven ? Thus is he said, also, to 
be clothed with a body. 

" Language is called the garment of thought ; how- 
ever, it should rather be, language is the flesh-garment, 
the body, of thought. I said' that imagination wove 
this flesh-garment ; and does she not ? Metaphors are 
her stuff. Examine language; what, if you except 
some few primitive elements (of natural sound), what 
is it all but metaphors, recognised as such, or no 
longer recognised ; still fluid and florid, or now solid- 
grown and colorless ? If those same primitive ele- 
ments are the osseous fixtures in the flesh-garment, 
language, — then are metaphors its muscles and tissues 
and living integuments. An unmetaphorical style 
you shall in vain seek for ; is not your very attention 
a siretching-to ? The difference lies here : some 
styles are lean, adust, wiry, the muscle itself seems 
osseous ; some are even quite pallid, hunger-bitten, 
and dead-looking ; while others, again, glow in the 
flush of health and vigorous self-growth, sometimes 
(as in my own case) not without an apoplectic ten- 
dency. Moreover there are sham metaphors, which, 
overhanging that same thought's-body (best naked,) 
and deceptively bedizening or bolstering it out, may 



PROSPECTIVE. 7U 

be called its false stuffings, superfluous show-cloaks 
(Putz Mantel), and tawdry woollen rags; whereof he 
that runs and reads may gather whole hampers, — and 
burn them." 

Than which paragraph on metaphors did the reader 
ever chance to see a more surprisingly metaphorical? 
However, that is not our chief grievance ; the Professor 
continues : 

" Why multiply instances ? It is written, ' The hea- 
vens and the earth shall fade away like a vesture ; ' 
which, indeed, they are ; the time-vesture of the Eter- 
nal. Whatsoever sensibly exists, whatsoever repre- 
sents spirit to spirit, is properly a clothing, a suit of 
raiment put on for a season, and to be laid off. Thus, 
in this one pregnant subject of Clothes, rightly un- 
derstood, is included all that men have thought, dream- 
ed, done, and been; the whole external universe and 
w r hat it holds is but clothing; and the essence of all 
science lies in the Philosophy of Clothes." 

Towards these dim, infinitely expanded regions, 
close bordering on the impalpable Inane, it is not 
without apprehension, and perpetual difficulties, that 
the Editor sees himself journeying and struggling. 
Till lately a cheerful daystar of hope hung- before him, 
in the expected aid of Hofrath Heuschrecke ; which 
daystar, however, melts now, not into the red of 
morning, but into a vague, gray, half-light^ uncertain 
whether dawn of day or dusk of utter darkness. For 
the last week, these so called biographical docu- 
ments are in his hand. By the kindness of a Scottish' 
Hamburgh merchant, whose name, known to the 
whole mercantile world, he must not mention; but 



80 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

whose honorable courtesy, now and often before spon- 
taneously manifested to him, a mere literary stranger, 
he cannot soon forget, — the bulky Weissnichtwo 
packet, with all its custom-house seals, foreign hiero- 
glyphs, and miscellaneous tokens of travail, arrived 
here in perfect safety, and free of cost. The reader 
shall now fancy with what hot haste it was broken up, 
with what breathless expectation glanced over; and, 
alas, with what unquiet disappointment it has, since 
then, been often thrown down, and again taken up. 

Hofrath Heuschrecke, in a too long-winded letter, 
full of compliments, Weissnichtwo politics, dinners, 
dining repartees, and other ephemeral trivialities, pro- 
ceeds to remind us of what we knew well already : 
that, however it may be with metaphysics, and other 
abstract science originating in the head (V&rstand) 
alone, no life-philosophy (Lebensphilosophie), such as 
this of Clothes pretends to be, which originates equally 
in the character (Gesnutk), and equally speaks thereto, 
can attain its significance till the character itself is 
known and seen ; " till the Author's view of the 
world (JVeltansicht), and how he actively and pas- 
sively came by such view, are clear ; in short, till a 
biography of him has been philosophico-poetically 
written, and philosophico-poetically read." " Nay," 
adds he, " were the speculative, scientific truth even 
known, you still, in this inquiring age, ask yourself, 
Whence came it, and Why, and How? — and rest 
not, till, if no better may be, fancy have shaped out 
an answer ; and, either in the authentic lineaments of 
fact, or the forged ones of fiction, a complete picture 
and genetical history of the man and his spiritual 



PROSPECTIVE. 81 

endeavour lies before you. But why," says the Hofrath, 
and, indeed, say we, "do I dilate on the uses of our 
Teufelsdrockh's biography ? The great Herr Minister 
von Goethe has penetratingly remarked that * man is 
properly the only object that interests man;' thus I 
too have noted, that in Weissnichtwo our whole con- 
versation is little or nothing else but biography or 
autobiography; ever humano-anecdotical (menschlich- 
anecdotisch). Biography is by nature the most univer- 
sally profitable, universally pleasant of all things ; 
especially biography of distinguished individual's. 

" By this time, mein Verehrtester (my most es- 
teemed)," continues he, with an eloquence which, 
unless the words be purloined from Teufelsdrockh, or 
some trick of his, as we suspect, is well nigh unac- 
countable, "by this time, you are fairly plunged 
(vertieft) in that mighty forest of Clothes-Philosophy ; 
and looking round, as all readers do, with astonish- 
ment enough. Such portions and passages as you 
have already mastered, and brought to paper, could 
not but awaken a strange curiosity touching the mind 
they issued from ; the perhaps unparalleled psychical 
mechanism, which manufactured such matter, and 
emitted it to the light of day. Had Teufelsdrockh 
also a father and mother? Did he, at one time, wear 
drivel-bibs, and live on spoon-meat ? Did he ever, in 
rapture and tears, clasp a friend's bosom to his ? Looks 
he also wistfully into the long burial-aisle of the past, 
where only winds, and their low, harsh moan, give 
inarticulate answer ? Has he fought duels ? Good 
Heaven ! how did he comport himself when in love ? 
By what singular stairsteps, in short, and subterranean 



82 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

passages, and sloughs of despair, and steep Pisgah 
hills, has he reached this wonderful, prophetic Hebron 
(a true Old-Clothes Jewry) where he now dwells 1 

" To all these natural questions the voice of public 
history is as yet silent. Certain only that he has been, 
and is, a pilgrim and traveller from a far country; 
more or less foot-sore and travel-soiled; has parted 
with road-companions, fallen among thieves, been 
poisoned by bad cookery, blistered with bugbites ; 
nevertheless at every stage (for they have let him 
pass), has had the bill to discharge. But the whole 
particulars of his route, his weather-observations, the 
picturesque sketches he took, though all regularly 
jotted down (in indelible, sympathetic ink, by an in- 
visible, interior penman,) are these nowhere forth- 
coming? Perhaps quite lost; one other leaf of that 
mighty volume (of human memory) left to fly abroad, 
unprinted, unpublished, unbound up, as waste paper; 
and rot, the sport of rainy winds ? 

" No, verehrtester Herr Herausgeber, in no wise ! 
I here, by the unexampled favor you stand in with our 
sage, send, not a biography only, but an autobiography ; 
at least the materials for such; wherefrom, if I mis- 
reckon not, your perspicacity will draw fullest insight ; 
and so the whole Philosophy and Philosopher of 
Clothes stand clear to the wondering eyes of England ; 
nay, thence, through America, through Hindostan, 
and the antipodal New Holland, finally conquer (ein- 
nehmen) great part of this terrestrial planet!" 

And now let the sympathising reader judge of our 
feeling, when, in place of this same autobiography 
with "fullest insight," we find— six considerable 



PROSPECTIVE. 83 

Paper-bags, carefully sealed, and marked successively, 
in gilt China ink, with the symbols of the six southern 
zodiacal signs, beginning at Libra ; in the inside of 
which sealed bags lie miscellaneous masses of sheets, 
and oftener shreds and snips, written in Professor 
Teufelsdrockh's scarce legible cursiv-schrift ; and treat- 
ing of all imaginable things under the zodiac and above 
it, but of his own personal history only at rare intervals, 
and then in the most enigmatic manner ! 

Whole fascicles there are, wherein the Professor, 
or, as he here, speaking in the third person, calls 
himself, " the Wanderer," is not once named. Then 
again, amidst what seems to be a metaphysico-theo- 
logical disquisition, " detached thoughts on the steam- 
engine," or " the continued possibility of prophecy," 
we shall meet with some quite private, not unim- 
portant biographical fact. On certain sheets stand 
dreams, authentic or not, while the circumjacent wak- 
ing actions are omitted. Anecdotes, oftenest without 
date of place or time, fly loosely on separate slips, like 
Sibylline leaves. Interspersed also are long, purely 
autobiographical delineations, yet without connexion, 
without recognisable coherence ; so unimportant, so 
superfluously minute, they almost remind us of " P. 
P. Clerk of this Parish." Thus does famine of intel- 
ligence alternate with waste. Selection, order, appears 
to be unknown to the Professor. In all bags the same 
imbroglio ; only perhaps in the bag Capricorn, and 
those near it, the confusion a little worse confounded. 
Close by a rather eloquent oration "On receiving the 
Doctor's Hat," lie washbills marked bezahlt (settled). 
His travels are indicated by the street-advertisements 






84 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

of the various cities he has visited ; of which street- 
advertisements, in most living tongues, here is perhaps 
the completest collection extant. 

So that if the Clothes-volume itself was too like a 
chaos, we have now, instead of the solar luminary that 
should still it, the airy Limbo which by intermixture 
will farther volatilize and discompose it ! As we shall 
perhaps see it our duty ultimately to deposit these six 
paper bags in the British Museum, farther description, 
and all vituperation of them, may be spared. Biogra- 
phy or autobiography of Teufelshrockh there is, clear- 
ly enough, none to be gleaned here ; at most, some 
sketchy, shadowy, fugitive likeness of him may, by 
unheard-of efforts, partly of intellect, partly of imagina- 
tion, on the side of editor and of reader, rise up between 
them. Only as a gaseous-chaotic appendix to that aque- 
ous-chaotic volume can the contents of the six bags 
hover round us, and portions thereof be incorporated 
with our delineation of it. 

Daily and nightly does the Editor sit (with green 
spectacles) deciphering these unimaginable documents 
from their perplexed cursiv-schrift ; collating them 
with the almost equally unimaginable volume, which 
stands in legible print. Over such a universal medley 
of high and low, of hot, cold, moist, and dry, is he 
here struggling (by union of like with like, which is 
method) to build a firm bridge for British travellers. 
Never, perhaps, since our first bridge-builders, sin and 
death, built that stupendous arch from hell-gate to the 
earth, did any pontifex, or pontiff, undertake such a, 
task as the present Editor. For in this arch, too, lead- 
ing as we humbly presume, far otherwards than that 



PROSPECTIVE. 85 

grand, primeval one, the materials are to be fished up 
from the weltering deep, and down from the simmering 
air, here one mass, there another, and cunningly ce- 
mented, while the elements boil beneath. Nor is there 
any supernatural force to do it with ; but simply the dili- 
gence and feeble thinking faculty of an English editor, 
endeavouring to evolve printed creation out of a Ger- 
man printed and written chaos, wherein, as he shoots 
to and fro in it, gathering, clutching, piecing the Why 
to the far-distant Wherefore, his whole faculty and self 
are like to be swallowed up. 

Patiently, under these incessant toils and agitations, 
does the Editor, dismissing all anger, see his otherwise 
robust health declining ; some fraction of his allotted 
natural sleep nightly leaving him, and little but an in- 
flamed nervous system to be looked for. What is the 
use of health, or of life, if not to do some work there- 
with ? And what work nobler than transplanting foreign 
thought into the barren domestic soil ; except, indeed, 
planting thought of your own, which the fewest are 
privileged to do ? Wild as it looks, this Philosophy 
of Clothes, can we ever reach its real meaning, promises 
to reveal new coming eras, the first dim rudiments and 
already-budding germs of a nobler era, in universal his- 
tory. Is not such a prize worth some striving ? For- 
ward with us, courageous reader ; be it towards failure, 
oi towards success ! The latter thou sharest with us, 
the former also is not all our own. 

8 



86 SARTOR RESARTUS* 



BOOK II. 
CHAPTER I. 

GENESIS. 

In a psychological point of view, it is perhaps 
questionable whether from birth and genealogy, how 
closely scrutinized soever, much insight is to be 
gained. Nevertheless, as in every phenomenon the 
beginning remains always the most notable moment ; 
so, with regard to any great man, we rest not till, for 
our scientific profit or not, the whole circumstances of 
his first appearance in this planet, and what manner 
of public entry he made, are with utmost complete- 
ness rendered manifest. To the Genesis of our Clothes- 
Philosopher, then, be this first chapter consecrated. 
Unhappily, indeed, he seems to be of quite obscure 
extraction; uncertain, we might almost say, whether 
of any ; so that this Genesis of his can properly be 
nothing but an Exodus (or transit out of invisibility 
into visibility); whereof the preliminary portion is no* 
where forthcoming. 

" In the village of Entepfuhl," thus writes he, in 
the bag Libra, on various papers, which we arrange 
with difficulty, " dwelt Andreas Futteral and his wife; 
childless, in still seclusion, and cheerful though now 
verging towards old age. Andreas had been grenadier 
sergeant, and even regimental schoolmaster, under 
Frederick the Great ; but now, quitting the halbert 



GENESIS. 87 

and ferule for the spade and pruninghook, cultivated 
a little orchard, on the produce of which he, Cin- 
cinnatus-like, lived not without dignity. Fruits, the 
peach, the apple, the grape, with other varieties, came 
in their season ; all which Andreas knew how to sell. 
On evenings he smoked largely, or read (as beseemed 
a regimental schoolmaster), and talked to neighbours 
that would listen about the victory of Rossbach ; and 
how Fritz the only (der Einzige) had once with his 
own royal lips spoken to him, had been pleased to say, 
when Andreas as camp-sentinel demanded the pass- 
word, Schweig Du Hund (Peace, hound!) before any 
of his staff-adjutants could answer. " Das nenn'ich 
mir einen Konig, there is what I call a king," would 
Andreas exclaim ; * but the smoke of Kunersdorf was 
still smarting his eyes.' 

" Gretchen, the housewife, won like Desdemona by 
the deeds rather than the looks of her now veteran 
Othello, lived not in altogether military subordination ; 
for, as Andreas said, « The womankind will not drill 
(wer kann die Weiber chert dressiren).' Nevertheless 
she at least loved him both for valor and wisdom; to 
her a Prussian grenadier sergeant and regiment's 
schoolmaster was little other than a Cicero and Cid ; 
what you see, yet cannot see over, is as good as infi- 
nite. Nay, was not Andreas, in very deed, a man of 
order, courage, downrightness (Geradheit) ; that under- 
stood Biisching's Geography, had been in the victory 
of Rossbach, and left for dead in the camisade of 
Hochkirch ? The good Gretchen, for all her fretting, 
watched over him and hovered round him, as only a 
true housemother can. Assiduously she cooked and 



OO SARTOR RESARTUS. 

sewed and scoured for him ; so that not only his old 
regimental sword and grenadier-cap, but the whole 
habitation and environment, where, on pegs of honor, 
they hung, looked ever trim and gay ; a roomy, painted 
cottage, embowered in fruit-trees and forest-trees, 
evergreens and honeysuckles ; rising many-colored 
from amid shaven grass-plots, flowers struggling in 
through the very windows ; under its long, projecting 
eaves nothing but garden-tools in methodic piles (to 
screen them from rain), and seats, where, especially 
on summer nights, a king might have wished to sit 
and smoke and call it his. Such a Bauergut (copy- 
hold) had Gretchen given her veteran ; whose sinewy 
arms, and long-disused gardening talent, had made it 
what you saw. 

"Into this umbrageous man's-nest, one meek yellow 
evening or dusk, when the sun, hidden indeed from 
terrestrial Entepfuhl, did nevertheless journey visible 
and radiant along the celestial balance (Libra), it was 
that a stranger of reverend aspect entered ; and, with 
grave salutation, stood before the two rather astonished 
housemates. He was close-muffled in a wide mantle ; 
which without farther parley unfolding, he deposited 
therefrom what seemed some basket, overhung with 
green Persian silk; saying only: Jhr lieben Leute, 
hier bringe ein uns elicit zb ares Verheilen ; nehmt es in 
oiler Acht, sorgfaltigst beniitzt es ; mit hohem Lohn, 
oder wohlwiit schiverem Zinsen, wird's einst zuruck- 
gefordert : * Good Christian people, here lies for you 
an invaluable loan ; take all heed thereof, in all careful- 
ness employ it ; with high recompense, or else with 
heavy penalty, will it one day be required back/ 



GENESIS. 89 

Uttering which singular words, in a clear, bell-like, 
forever memorable tone, the stranger gracefully with- 
drew ; and before Andreas or his wife, gazing in ex- 
pectant wonder, had time to fashion either question or 
answer, was clean gone. Neither out of doors could 
aught of him be seen or heard ; he had vanished in 
the thickets, in the dusk; the orchard-gate stood 
quietly closed ; the stranger was gone once and always. 
So sudden had the whole transaction been, in the 
autumn stillness and twilight, so gentle, noiseless, that 
the Futterals could have fancied it all a trick of imagi- 
nation, or some visit from an authentic spirit. Only 
that the green silk basket, such as neither imagina- 
tion nor authentic spirits are wont to carry, still stood 
visible and tangible on their little parlour-table. To- 
wards this the astonished couple, now with lit candle, 
hastily turned their attention. Lifting the green veil, 
to- see what invaluable it hid, they descried there, 
amicl down and rich white, wrappages, no Pitt Diamond 
or Hapsburg Regalia, but, in the softest sleep, a little 
red-colored infant! Beside it lay a roll of gold 
Friedrichs, the exact amount of which was never 
publicly known ; also a Taufschein (baptismal certifi- 
cate), wherein unfortunately nothing but the name, 
was decipherable ; other document or indication none 
whatever. 

" To wonder and conjecture was unavailing, then 
and always thenceforth. Nowhere in Entepfuhl, on 
the morrow or next day, did tidings transpire of any 
such figure as the stranger; nor could the traveller, 
who had passed through the neighbouring town in 
coach and four, be connected with this apparition, 

8* 



90 SARTOR RESARTTJS. 

except in the way of gratuitous surmise. Meanwhile, 
for Andreas and his wife, the grand practical problem 
was : Wha to do with this little, sleeping, red-colored 
infant? Amid amazements and curiosities, which had 
to die away without external satisfying, they resolved, 
as in such circumstances charitable, prudent people 
needs must, on nuising it, though with spoon-meat, 
into whiteness, and if possible into manhood. The 
heavens smiled on their endeavour. Thus has that 
same mysterious individual ever since had a status for 
himself, in this visible universe, some modicum of 
victual and lodging and parade ground ; and now ex- 
panded in bulk, faculty, and knowledge of good and 
evil, he, as Herr Diogenes Teufelsdrockh, professes 
or is ready to profess, perhaps not altogether without 
effect, in the new University of Weissnichtwo, the new 
science of things in general. " 

Our Philosopher declares here, as, indeed, we should 
think he well might, that these facts, first communi- 
cated, by the good Gretchen Futteral, in his twelfth 
year, "produced on the boyish heart and fancy a quite 
indelible impression. Who this reverend personage," 
he says, " that glided into the orchard cottage when 
the sun was in Libra, and then, as on spirit's wings, 
glided out again, might be? An inexpressible desire, 
full of love and of sadness, has often since struggled 
within me to shape an answer. Ever, in my dis- 
tresses and my loneliness, has fantasy turned, full of 
longing (sehnsuchtsvoll), to that unknown father, who, 
perhaps far from me, perhaps near, either way invisi- 
ble, might have taken me to his paternal bosom, there 
to lie screened from many a woe. Thou beloved 



GENESIS. 91 

father, dost thou still, shut out from me only by thin, 
penetrable curtains of earthly space, wend to and fro 
among the crowd of the living ? Or art thou hidden by 
those far thicker curtains of the everlasting night, or 
rather of the everlasting day, through which my mortal 
eye and outstretched arms need not strive to reach ? 
Alas ! I know not, and in vain vex myself to know- 
More than once, heart-deluded, have I taken for thee 
this and the other noble looking stranger ; and ap- 
proached him wistfully, with infinite regard ; but he too 
must repel me, he too was not thou. 

" And yet, O man born of woman," cries the auto- 
biographer, with one of his sudden whirls, " wherein 
is my case peculiar ? Hadst thou, any more than I, a 
father whom thou knowest? The Andreas and Gret- 
chen, or the Adam and Eve, who led thee into life, 
and for a time suckled and pap-fed thee there, whom 
thou namest father and mother ; these were, like mine, 
but thy nursing father and nursing mother ; thy true 
Beginning and Father is in heaven, whom with the 
bodily eye thou shalt never behold, but only with the 
spiritual." 

" The little green veil," adds he, among much 
similar moralizing and embroiled discoursing, " I yet 
keep ; still more inseparably the name, Diogenes 
Teufelsdrockh. From the veil can nothing be in- 
feried ; a piece of now quite faded Persian silk, like 
thousands of others. On the name I have many times 
meditated and conjectured; but neither in this lay 
there any clue. That is was my unknown father's 
name I must hesitate to believe. To no purpose have 
I searched through all the herald's books, in and with- 



92 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

out the German Empire, and through all manner of 
subscriber-lists (Pranumeranten,) militia rolls, and 
other name-catalogues ; extraordinary names as we 
have in Germany, the name Teufelsdrockh, except as 
appended to my own person, nowhere occurs. Again, 
what may the unchristian rather than Christian • Dio- 
genes' mean ? Did that reverend basket-bearer in- 
tend by such designation, to shadow forth my future 
destiny, or his own present malign humor ? Perhaps 
the latter, perhaps both. Thou ill-starred parent t who 
like an ostrich must leave thy ill-starred offspring to 
be hatched into self-support by the mere sky-influence s 
of chance, can thy pilgrimage have been a smooth 
one ? Beset by misfortune thou doubtless hast been ; 
or, indeed, by the worst figure of misfortune, by mis- 
conduct. Often have I fancied how, in thy hard life- 
battle, thou wert shot at and slung at, wounded, hand- 
fettered, hamstrung, browbeaten, and bedevilled, by 
the time-spirit (Zeitgeist) in thyself and others, till 
the good soul first given thee was seared into grim 
rage ; and thou hadst nothing for it but to leave in me 
an indignant appeal to the future, and living, speaking 
protest against the devil, as that same spirit, not of the 
time only, but of time itself, is well named ! Which 
appeal and protest, may I now modestly add, was not 
perhaps quite lost in air. 

" For, indeed, as Walter Shandy often insisted, there 
is much, nay, almost all, in names. The name is the 
earliest garment you wrap round the earth^visiting me ; 
to which it thenceforth cleaves more tenaciously (for 
there are names that have lasted nigh thirty cen- 
turies) than the very skin. And know from without 



GENESIS. 93 

what mystic influences does it not send inwards, even 
to the centre ; especially in those plastic first times, 
when the whole soul is yet infantine, soft, and the 
invisible seed-grain will grow to be an all-overshadow- 
ing tree ! Names ! Could I unfold the influence of 
names, which are the most important of all Clothings, 
I were a second greater Trismegistus. Not only all 
common speech, but science, poetry itself, is no other, 
if thou consider it, than a right naming. Adam's 
first task was giving names to natural appearances. 
What is ours still but a continuation of the same ; be 
the appearances exotic-vegetable, organic, mechanic, 
stars, or starry movements (as in science) ; or, (as in 
poetry) passions, virtues, calamities, god-attributes, 
gods? — In a very plain sense the proverb says, Call 
one a thief \ and he will steal; in an almost similar 
sense, may we not perhaps say, Call one Diogenes 
Teufelsdrockh, and he will open the Philosophy of 
Clothes." 

" Meanwhile the incipient Diogenes, like others, all 
ignorant of his Why, his How, or Whereabout, was 
opening his eyes to the kind light ; sprawling out his 
ten fingers and toes ; listening, tasting, feeling ; in a 
word, by all his five senses, still more by his sixth 
sense of hunger, and a whole infinitude of inward, 
spiritual, half-awakened senses, endeavouring daily to 
acquire for himself some knowledge of this strange 
universe where he had arrived, be his task therein 
what it might. Infinite was his progress ; thus, in 
some fifteen months, he could perform the miracle of 
— speech ! To breed a fresh soul is it not like brood- 
ing a fresh (celestial) egg ; wherein as yet all is form- 



94 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

less, powerless ; yet by degrees organic elements and 
fibres shoot through the watery albumen ; and out of 
vague sensation, grows thought, grows fantasy and 
force, and we have philosophies, dynasties, nay, poe- 
tries and religions ! 

" Young Diogenes, or rather young Gneschen, for 
by such diminutive had they in their fondness named 
him, travelled forward to those high consummations, 
by quick, yet easy stages. The Futterals, to avoid vain 
talk, and moreover keep the roll of gold Friedrichs safe, 
gave out that he was a grand-nephew ; the orphan of 
some sister's daughter, suddenly deceased, in Andreas's 
distant Prussian birth-land ; of whom, as of her indi- 
gent, sorrowing widower, little enough was known at 
Entepfuhl. Heedless of all which, the nursling took to 
his spoon-meat, and throve. I have heard him noted 
as a still infant, that kept his mind much to himself; 
above all, that seldom or never cried. He already felt 
that time was precious ; that he had other work cut out 
for him than whimpering." 

Such, after utmost painful search and collation 
among these miscellaneous paper-masses, is all the 
notice we can gather of Herr Teufelsdrockh's gene- 
alogy. More imperfect, more enigmatic it can seem 
to few readers than to us. The Professor, in whom 
truly we more and more discern a certain satirical turn, 
and deep under-currents of roguish whim, for the 
present stands pledged in honor, so we will not doubt 
him. But seems it not conceivable that, by the " good 
Gretchen Futteral," or some other perhaps interested 
party, he has himself been deceived ? Should these 



CHAPTER II. 

IDYLLIC. 

"Happy season of childhood!" exclaims Teufels- 
drockh. "Kind [nature, that art to all a bountiful 
mother ; that visitest the poor man's hut with auroral 
radiance; and for thy nursling hath provided a soft 
swathing of love and infinite hope, wherein he waxes 
and slumbers, danced round (umgaukelt) by sweetest 
dreams ! If the paternal cottage still shuts us in, its 
roof still screens us ; with a father we have as yet a 
prophet, priest, and king, and an obedience that makes 
us free. The young spirit has awakened out of eter- 
nity, and knows not what we mean by time ; as yet 
time is no fast-hurrying stream, but a sportful, sunlit 
ocean ; years to the child are as ages. Ah ! the secret 
of vicissitude, of that slower or quicker decay and 
ceaseless down-rushing of the universal world-fabric, 



• 



IDYLLIC 95 

sheets, translated or not, ever reach the Entepfuhl 
Circulating Library, some cultivated native of that dis- 
trict might feel called to afford explanation. Nay, 
since books, like invisible scouts, permeate the whole 
habitable globe, and Tf&nbuctoo itself is not safe from £* 
British literature, may not some copy find out even 
the mysterious, basket-bearing stranger, who in a state 
of extreme senility perhaps still exists ; and gently force 
even him to disclose himself; to claim openly a son, in 
whom any father may feel pride ? 



96 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

from the granite mountain to the man or day '■moth, is 
yet unknown ; and in a motionless universe, we taste, 
what afterwards in this quick-whirling universe is for- 
ever denied us, the balm of rest. Sleep on, thou fair 
child, for thy long, rough journey is at hand! A little 
while, and thou too shalt sleep no more, but thy very 
dreams shall be mimic battles ; thou too, with old 
Arnauld, must say, in stern patience: 'Rest? rest? 
Shall I not have all eternity to rest in ? Celestial 
Nepenthe ! though a Pyrrhus conquer empires, and an 
Alexander sack the world, he finds thee not; and thou 
hast once fallen gently, of thy own accord, on the eye- 
lids, on the heart of every mother's child. For as yet 
sleep and waking are one ; the fair life-garden rustles 
infinite around, and everywhere is dewy fragrance, and 
the budding of hope ; which budding, if in youth, too 
frost-nipt, it grow to flowers, will in manhood yield no 
fruit, but a prickly, bitter-rinded stone-fruit, of which 
the fewest can find the kernel."' 

In such rose-colored light does our Professor, as 
poets are wont, look back on his childhood ; the his- 
torical details of which (to say nothing of much other 
vague, oratorical matter) he accordingly dwells on, 
with an almost wearisome minuteness. We hear of 
Entepfuhl standing " in trustful derangement" among 
the woody slopes ; the paternal orchard flanking it as 
extreme outpost from below ; the little Kuhbach gush- 
ing kindly by, among beech-rows, through river after 
river, into the Donau, into the Black Sea, into the 
atmosphere and universe; and how "the brave old 
linden," stretching like a parasol of twenty ells in 
radius, overtopping all other rows and clumps, towered 



IDYLLIC, 97 

up from the central Agora and Campus Martius of 
the village, like its sacred tree ; and how the old men 
sat talking under its shadow (Gneschen often greedily 
listening), and the wearied laborers reclined, and the 
unwearied children sported, and the young men and 
maidens often danced to flute-music. " Glorious sum- 
mer twilights," cries Teufelsdrockh, "when the sun, 
like a proud conqueror and imperial taskmaster, turned 
his back, with his gold-purple emblazonry, and all his 
fire-clad body-guard (of prismatic colors); and the 
tired brickmakers ©f this clay earth might steal a little 
frolic, and those few meek stars would not tell of 
them!" 

Then we have long details of the Weinlesen (vin- 
tage), the harvest-home, Christmas, and so forth ; with 
a whole cycle of the Entepfuhl children's games, dif- 
fering apparently by mere superficial shade from those 
of other countries. Concerning all which we shall 
here, for obvious raasons, say nothing. What cares 
the world for our as yet miniature Philosopher's achieve- 
ments under that "brave old linden V 9 Or even 
where is the use of such practical reflections as the 
following? "In all the sports of children, where it 
only in their wanton breakages and defacements, you 
shall discern a creative instinct (schaffenden Trieb) ; 
the mankin feels that he is a born man, that his vo- 
cation is to work. The choicest present you can 
make him is a tool; be it knife or pengun, for con- 
struction or for destruction ; either way it is for work, 
for change. In gregarious sports of skill or strength 
the boy trains himself to cooperation, for war or peace, 
as governor or governed ; the little maid, again, provi- 

9 



9B SARTOR RESARTUS. 

dent of her domestic destiny, takes with preference to 
dolls." 

Perhaps, however, we may give this anecdote, con- 
sidering who it is that relates it : " My first short- 
clothes were of yellow serge ; or rather, I should say, 
my first short-cloth, for the vesture was one and indi- 
visible, reaching from neck to ancle, a mere body with 
four limbs; of which fashion how4ittle could I then 
divine the architectural, how much less the moral sig- 
nificance !" 

More graceful is the following little picture: "On 
fine evenings I was wont to carry forth my supper 
(bread-crumb boiled in milk), and eat it out of doors. 
On the coping of the orchard-wall, which I could 
reach by climbing, or still more easily if father An- 
dreas would set up the pruning-ladder, my porringer 
was placed ; there, many a sunset, have I, looking at 
the distant western mountains, consumed, not without 
relish, my evening meal. Those hues of gold and 
azure, that hush of world's expectation as day died, 
were still a Hebrew speech for me ; nevertheless I was 
looking at the fair, illuminated letters, and had an eye 
for their gilding." 

With " the little one's friendship for the cattle and 
poultry" we shall not much intermeddle. It may be 
that hereby he acquired " a certain deeper sympathy 
with animated nature ;" but when, we would ask, saw 
any man, in a collection of biographical documents, 
such a piece as this? "Impressive enough (bedeut- 
ungsvoll) was it to hear, in early morning, the swine- 
herd's horn ; and know that so many hungry, happy 
quadrupeds were on all sides starting in hot haste to 



IDYLLIC. 99 

join him, for breakfast on the heath. Or to see them, 
at eventide, all marching in again, with short squeak, 
almost in military order; and each, topographically 
correct, trotting off in succession to the right or left, 
through its own lane, to its own dwelling ; till old 
Kunz, at the village-head, now left alone, blew his last 
blast, and retired for the night. We are wont to love 
the hog chiefly in the form of ham ; yet did not these 
bristly, thick-skinned beings here manifest intelligence, 
perhaps humor of character ; at any rate, a touching, 
trustful submissiveness to man, — who, were he but a 
swineherd, in darned gabardine, and leather breeches 
more resembling slate or discolored tin breeches, is still 
the hierarch of this lower world ?" 

It is maintained, by Helvetius and his set, that an 
infant of genius is quite the same as any other infant, 
only that certain surprisingly favorable influences ac- 
company him through life, especially through child- 
hood, and expand him, while others lie close-folded 
and continue dunces. Herein, say they, consists the 
whole difference between an inspired prophet and a 
double-barrelled game-preserver ; the inner man of the 
one has been fostered into genorous development ; that 
of the other, crushed down perhaps by vigor of animal 
digestion, and the like, has exuded and evaporated, or 
at best sleeps now irresuscitably stagnant at the bottom 
of his stomach. "With which opinion," cries Teu- 
felsdrockh, " I should as soon agree as with this other, 
that an acorn might, by favorable or unfavorable influ- 
ences of soil and climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or 
the cabbage-seed into an oak. 

LofC. 



100 SARTUS RESARTUS. 

" Nevertheless," continues he, "I, too, acknowledge 
the all but omnipotence of early culture and nurture ; 
hereby we have either a doddered, dwarf bush, or a 
high-towering, wide-shadowing tree ; either a sick, yel- 
low cabbage, or an edible, luxuriant, green one. Of a 
truth, it is the duty of all men, especially of all philoso- 
phers, to note down with accuracy the characteristic 
circumstances of their education, what furthered, what 
hindered, what in any way modified it ; to which duty, 
now-a-days, so pressing for many a German autobio- 
grapher, I also zealously address myself." — Thou 
rogue ! Is it by short clothes of yellow serge, and 
swineherd horns, that an infant of genius is educated ? 
And yet, as usual, it ever remains doubtful whether 
he is laughing in his sleeve at these autobiographical 
times of ours, or writing from the abundance of his own 
fond ineptitude. For he continues : "If, among the 
ever-streaming currents of sights, hearings, feelings for 
pain or pleasure, whereby, as in a magic hall, young 
Gneschen went about environed, I might venture to 
select and specify, perhaps these following were also of 
the number : — 

" Doubtless, as childish sports call forth intellect, 
activity, so the young creature's imagination was stir- 
red up, and a historical tendency given him by the 
narrative habits of father Andreas ; who, with his 
battle-reminiscences, and gray, austere, yet hearty, 
patriarchal aspect, could not but appear another Ulysses 
and l much-enduring man.* Eagerly I hung upon his 
tales when listening neighbours enlivened the hearth. 
From these perils and these travels, wild and far al- 
most as Hades itself, a dim world of adventure ex- 



IDYLLIC. 101 

panded itself, within me. Incredible also was the 
knowledge I acquired in standing by the old men un- 
der the linden-tree. The whole of immensity was yet 
new to me ; and had not these reverend seniors, talka- 
tive enough, been employed in partial surveys thereof 
for nigh fourscore years ? With amazement I began to 
discover that Entepfuhl stood in the middle of a country, 
of a world ; that there was such a thing as history, as 
biography ; to which I also, one day, by hand and 
tongue, might contribute. 

" In a like sense worked the Post-wagen (stage- 
coach), which, slow-rolling under its mountains of 
men and luggage, wended through our village ; north- 
wards, truly, in the dead of night; yet southwards 
visibly at eventide. Not till my eighth year, did I 
reflect that this Post-wagen could be other than some 
terrestrial moon, rising and setting by mere law of 
nature, like the heavenly one ; that it came on made 
highways, from far cities towards far cities ; weaving 
them, like a monstrous shuttle, into closer and closer 
union. It was then that, independently of Schiller's 
Wilhelm Tell, I made this not quite insignificant re- 
flection (so true also in spiritual things) ; Any road, 
this simple Entepfulh road, will lead you to the end of 
the world I 

" Why mention our swallows, which, out of far 
Africa, as I learned, threading their way over seas and 
mountains, corporate cities and belligerent nations, 
yearly found themselves, with the month of May, snug- 
lodged in our cottage lobby ? The hospitable father 
(for cleanliness' sake) had fixed a little bracket, plumb 
under their nest. There they built, and caught flies, and 

9* 



102 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

twittered, and bred ; and all, I chiefly, from the heart 
loved them. Bright, nimble creatures, who taught you 
the mason-craft ; nay, stranger still, gave you a masonic 
incorporation, almost social police? For if, by ill 
chance, and when time pressed, your house fell, have 
I not seen five neighbourly helpers appear next day ; 
and swashing to and fro, with animated, loud, long- 
drawn chirpings, and activity almost super-hirundine, 
complete it again before nightfall ? 

" But undoubtedly the grand summary of Entepfuhl 
child's-culture, where as in a funnel its manifold in- 
fluences were concentrated and simultaneously poured 
down on us, was the annual cattle-fair. Here, assem- 
bling from all the four winds, came the elements of 
an unspeakable hurly-burly. Nutbrown maids and 
nutbrown men, all clear-washed, loud-laughing, bedi- 
zened and be-ribanded ; who came for dancing, for 
treating, and, if possible, for happiness. Top-booted 
graziers from the north ; Swiss brokers, Italian dro- 
vers, also top-booted, from the south ; these with their 
subalterns in leather jerkins, leather skullcaps, and 
long oxgoads ; shouting in half-articulate speech, amid 
the inarticulate barking and bellowing. Apart stood 
potters from far Saxony, with their crockery in fair 
rows ; Niirnberg pedlars, in booths that to me seemed 
richer than Ormuz bazaars ; showmen from the 
Lago Maggiore ; detachments of the Wiener Schitb 
(offscourings of Vienna) vociferously superintending 
games of chance. Ballad-singers brayed, auctioneers 
grew hoarse ; cheap new wine (heuriger) flowed like 
water, still worse confounding the confusion ; and 
high over all, vaulted, in ground-and-lofty tumbling, a 



IDYLLIC. 103 

parti-colored merry-andrew, like the genius of the place 
and of life itself , 

" Thus encircled by the mystery of existence ; under 
the deep heavenly firmament; waited on by the four 
golden seasons, with their vicissitudes of contribution, 
— for even grim winter brought its skating-matches 
and shooting-matches, its snow-storms and Christmas 
carols, — did the child sit and learn. These things 
were the alphabet, whereby in after-time he was to 
syllable and partly read the grand volume of the world. 
What matters it whether such alphabet be in large gilt 
letters or in small ungilt ones, so you have an eye to 
read it ? For Gneschen, eager to learn, the very act of 
looking thereon was a blessedness that gilded all. His 
existence was a bright, soft element of joy ; out of 
which, as in Prospero's Island, wonder after wonder 
bodied itself forth, to teach by charming. 

"Nevertheless I were but a vain dreamer, to say, 
that even then my felicity was perfect. I had, once 
for all, come down from heaven into the earth. Among 
the rainbow colors that glowed on my horizon, lay 
even in childhood a dark ring of care, as yet no thicker 
than a thread, and often quite overshone ; yet always 
it reappeared, nay, ever waxing broader and broader ; 
till in after-years it almost overshadowed my whole 
canopy, and threatened to engulf me in final night. It 
was the ring of necessity, whereby we are all begirt. 
Happy he for whom a kind heavenly sun brightens it 
into a ring of duty, and plays round it with beautiful 
prismatic diffractions ; yet ever, as basis and as bourne 
for our whole being, it is there. 



104 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

" For the first few years of our terrestrial appren- 
ticeship, we have not much work to do ; but, boarded 
and lodged gratis, are set down mostly to look about 
us over the workshop, and see others work, till we 
have understood the tools a little, and can handle this 
and that. If good passivity alone, and not good pas- 
sivity and good activity together, were the thing want- 
ed, then was my early position favorable beyond the 
most. In all that respects openness of sense, affection- 
ate temper, ingenuous curiosity, and the fostering of 
these, what more could I have wished? On the other 
side, however, things went not so well. My active 
power (Thatkraft) was unfavorably hemmed in; of 
which misfortune how many traces yet abide with me ! 
In an orderly house, where the litter of children's sports 
is hateful enough, your training is too stoical ; rather to 
bear and forbear than to make and do. I was forbid 
much ; wishes in any measure bold I had to renounce ; 
everywhere a strait bond of obedience inflexibly held 
me down. Thus already freewill often came in painful 
collision with necessity ; so that my tears flowed, and 
at seasons the child itself might taste that root of bitter- 
ness, wherewith the whole fruitage of our life is 
mingled and tempered. 

" In which habituation to obedience, truly it was 
beyond measure safer to err by excess than by defect. 
Obedience is our universal duty and destiny; wherein 
whoso will not bend must break. Too early arid too 
thoroughly we cannot be trained to know that Would, 
in this world of ours, is as mere zero to Should, and 
for most part as the smallest of fractions even to Shall. 
Hereby was laid for me the basis of worldly discretion, 



IDYLLIC. 105 

nay, of morality itself. Let me not quarrel with my 
upbringing ! It was rigorous, too frugal, compressively 
secluded, every way unscientific; yet in that very 
strictness and domestic solitude might there not lie 
the root of deeper earnestness, of the stem from which 
all noble fruit must grow 1 Above all, how unskilful 
soever, it was loving, it was well-meant, honest; 
whereby every deficiency was helped. My kind 
mother, for as such I must ever love the good Gret- 
chen, did me one altogether invaluable service ; she 
taught me, less indeed by word than by act and daily 
reverent look and habitude, her own simple version of 
the Christian faith. Andreas, too, attended church; 
yet more like a parade-duty, for which he in the other 
world expected pay with arrears, — as, I trust, he has 
received ; but my mother, with a true woman's heart, 
and fine though uncultivated sense, was in the strictest 
acceptation religious. How indestructibly the good 
grows, and propagates itself, even among the weedy 
entanglements of evil ! The highest whom I knew on 
earth I here saw bowed down, with awe unspeakable, 
before a Higher in heaven. Such things, especially in 
infancy, reach inwards to the very core of your being ; 
mysteriously does a holy of holies build itself into 
visibility in the mysterious deeps ; and reverence, the 
divinest in man, springs forth undying from its mean 
envelopment of fear. Wouldst thou rather be a pea- 
sant's son that knew, were it never so rudely, there was 
a God in heaven and in man ; or a duke's son that 
only knew there were two and thirty quarters on the 
family-coach ?" 



106 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

To which last question we must answer: Beware 
O Teufelsdrockh, of spiritual pride ! 



CHAPTER III. 

PEDAGOGY. 

Hitherto we see young Gneschen, in his indivisi- 
ble ease of yellow serge, borne forward mostly on the 
arms of kind nature alone; seated, indeed, and much 
to his mind, in the terrestrial workshop ; but (except 
his soft hazel eyes, which we doubt not already 
gleamed with a still intelligence) called upon for little 
voluntary movement there. Hitherto, accordingly, his 
aspect is rather generic, that of an incipient philoso- 
pher and poet in the abstract. Perhaps it would puzzle 
Herr Heuschrecke himself to say wherein the special 
Doctrine of Clothes *is as yet foreshadowed or beto- 
kened. For with Gneschen, as with others, the man 
may indeed stand pictured in the boy (at least, all the 
pigments are there) ; yet only some half of the man 
stands in the child, or young boy, namely, his passive 
endowment, not his active. The more impatient are 
we to discover what figure he cuts in this latter capa- 
city; how, when, to use his own words, "he under- 
stands the tools a little, and can handle this or that," 
he will proceed to handle it. 

Here, however, may be the place to state that, in 
much of our Philosopher's history, there is something 
of an almost Hindoo character; nay, perhaps in that 



TEDAGOGY. 107 

so well fostered and every-way-excellent "passivity" 
of his, which, with no free development of the antag- 
onist activity, distinguished his childhood, we may 
detect the rudiments of much that, in after-days, and 
still in these present days, astonishes the world. For 
the shallow-sighted, Teufelsdrockh is oftenest a man 
without activity of any kind, a No-man; for the deep- 
sighted, again, a man with activity almost superabun- 
dant, yet so spiritual, close-hidden, enigmatic, that no 
mortal can foresee its explosions, or, even when it has 
exploded, so much as ascertain its significance. A 
dangerous, difficult temper for the modern European ; 
above all, disadvantageous in the hero of a biography ! 
Now, as heretofore, it will behove the Editor of these 
pages, were it never so unsuccessfully, to do his en- 
deavour. 

Among the earliest tools of any complicacy which 
a man, especially a man of letters, gets to handle, 
are his class-books. On this portion of his history 
Teufelsdrockh looks down professedly as indifferent. 
Reading he " cannot remember ever to have learned ;" 
so perhaps had it by nature. He says generally; " Of 
the insignificant portion of my education which de- 
pended on schools, there need almost no notice be 
taken. I learned what others learn ; and kept it 
stored by in a corner of my head, seeing as yet no 
manner of use in it. My schoolmaster, a downbent, 
brokenhearted, underfoot martyr, as others of that 
guild are, did little for me, except discover that he 
could do little. He, good soul, pronouced me a 
genius, fit for the learned professions ; and that I 



108 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

must be sent to the gymnasium, and one day to the 
university. Meanwhile, what printed thing soever I 
could meet with I read. My very copper pocket- 
money I laid out on stall-literature ; which, as it accu- 
mulated, I with my own hands sewed into volumes. 
By this means was the young head furnished with a 
considerable miscellany of things and shadows of 
things. History in authentic fragments lay mingled 
with fabulous chimeras, wherein also was reality ; and 
the whole, not as dead stuff, but as living pabulum, 
tolerably nutritive for a mind as yet so peptic." 

That the Entepfuhl schoolmaster judged well we 
now know. Indeed, already in the youthful Gneschen, 
with all his outward stillness, there may have been 
manifest an inward vivacity that promised much; 
symptoms of a spirit singularly open, thoughtful, 
almost poetical. Thus, to say nothing of his suppers 
on the orchard-wall, and other phenomena of that 
earlier period, have many readers of these pages stum- 
bled, in their twelfth year, on such reflections as the 
following ? " It struck me much, as I sat by the 
Kuhbach, one silent noontide, and watched its flowing, 
gurgling, to think how this same streamlet had flowed 
and gurgled, through all changes of weather and of 
fortune, from beyond the earliest date of history. 
Yes, probably on the morning when Joshua forded 
Jordan ; even as at the mid-day when Caesar, doubt- 
less with difficulty, swam the Nile, yet kept his Com- 
mentaries dry, — this little Kuhbach, assiduous as 
Tiber, Eurotas, or Siloa, was murmuring on across 
the wilderness, as yet unnamed, unseen. Here, too, as 
in the Euphrates and the Ganges, is a vein or veinlet 



PEDAGOGY. 109 

of the grand world-circulation of waters, which, with 
its atmospheric arteries, has lasted and lasts simply with 
the world. Thou fool ! Nature alone is antique, and 
the oldest art a mushroom ; that idle crag thou sittest 
on is six thousand years of age." In which little 
thought, as in a little fountain, may there not lie the 
beginning of those well-nigh unutterable meditations 
on the grandeur and the mystery of Time, and its 
relation to Eternity, which play such a part in this 
Philosophy of Clothes ? 

Over his gymnasic and academic years the Profes- 
sor by no means lingers so lyrical and joyful as over 
his childhood. Green, sunny tracts there are still ; 
but intersected by bitter rivulets of tears, here and 
there stagnating into sour marshes of discontent. 
" With my first view of the Hinterschlag gymna- 
sium," writes he, " my evil days began. Well do I 
still remember the red, sunny, Whitsuntide morning, 
when, trotting full of hope by the side of Father 
Andreas, I entered the main street of the place, and 
saw its steeple-clock (then striking eight), and Schuld- 
thurm (Jail), and the aproned or disaproned burghers 
moving in to breakfast. A little dog, in mad terror, 
was rushing past; for some human imps had tied a 
tin kettle to its tail ; thus did the agonized creature, 
loud-jingling, career through the whole length of the 
borough, and became notable enough. Fit emblem of 
many a conquering hero, to whom Fate (wedding fan- 
tasy to sense, as it often elsewhere does) has malig- 
nantly appended a tin kettle of ambition, to chase 
him on ; which, the faster he runs, urges him the 
faster, the more loudly and more foolishly ! Fit em- 

10 



1 10 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

blem also of much that awaited myself in that mis- 
chievous den ; as in the world, whereof it was a portion 
and epitome ! 

4 'Alas, the kind beech-rows of Entepfuhl were 
hidden in the distance. I was among strangers, 
harshly, at best indifferently, disposed towards me ; 
the young heart felt, for the first time, quite orphaned 
and alone," His school-fellows, as is usual, perse- 
cuted him. " They were boys," he says, " mostly 
rude boys, and obeyed the impulse of rude nature, 
which bids the deer-herd fall upon any stricken hart, 
the duck flock put to death any bioken-winged brother 
or sister, and on all hands the strong tyrannize over 
the weak." He admits that, though "perhaps in an 
unusual degree morally courageous," he succeeded ill 
in battle, and would fain have avoided it ; a result, as 
would appear, owing less to his small personal stature 

tor in passionate seasons he was " incredibly nim- 
ble"), than to his virtuous principles." "If it was 
disgraceful to be beaten," says he, " it was only a 
shade less disgraceful to have so much as fought; thus 
was I drawn two ways at once, and in this important 
element of school history, the war-element, had little 
but sorrow." On the whole, that same excellent 
4i passivity," so notably in Teufelsdrockh's childhood, 
is here visibly enough again getting nourishment. 

• He wept often ; indeed to such a degree, that he 
was nicknamed Der Weinende (the Tearful), which 
epithet, till towards his thirteenth year, was indeed 
hot quite unmerited. Only at rare intervals did the 
young soul burst forth into fire-eyed rage, and, with a 
stonnfulness (Ungestiim) under which the boldest 



PEDAGOGY. Ill 

quailed, assert that he too had Rights of Man, or at 
least of Mankin." In all which, who does not discern 
a fine flower-tree and cinnamon-tree (of genius) nigh 
choked among pumpkins, reed-grass, and ignoble 
shrubs ; and forced, if it would live, to struggle up- 
wards only, and not outwards ; into a height quite 
sickly and dispioportioned to its breadth ! 

We find, moreover, that his Greek and Latin were 
" mechanically" taught ; Hebrew scarce even mechan- 
ically ; much else which they called History, Cosmo- 
graphy, Philosophy, and so forth, no better than not 
at all. So that, except inasmuch as Nature was still 
busy ; and he himself " went about, as was of old his 
wont, among the craftsmen's workshops, there learn- 
ing many things ;" and farther lighted on some small 
store of curious reading, in Hans Wachtel the cooper's 
house, where he lodged, — his time, it would appear, 
was utterly wasted ; which facts the Professor has not 
yet learned to look upon with any contentment. In- 
deed, throughout the whole of this bag Scorpio, where 
we now are, and often in the following bag, he shows 
himself unusually animated on the matter of education, 
and not without some touch of what we might presume 
to be anger. 

" My teachers," says he, " were hide-bound pedants, 
without knowledge of man's nature or of boy's ; or 
of aught save their lexicons and quarterly account- 
books. Innumerable dead vocables (no dead lan- 
guage, for they themselves knew no language) they 
crammed into us, and called it fostering the growth of 
mind. How can an inanimate, mechanical gerund- 
grinder, the like of whom will, in a subsequent cen- 



112 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

tury, be manufactured at NUrnberg out of wood and 
leather, foster the growth of anything; much more 
j of mind, which grows, not like a vegetable (by having 
/ its roots littered with etymological compost), but like 
a spirit, by mysterious contact of spirit; thought 
kindling itself at the fire of living thought? How 
shall he give kindling, in whose own inward man there 
is no live coal, but all is burnt out to a dead grammati- 
cal cinder ? The Hinterschlag professors knew syntax 
enough ; and of the human soul thus much : that it 
had a faculty called memory, and could be acted on 
through the muscular integument by appliance of birch 
rods. 

"Alas, so is it everywhere, so will it ever be ; till 
the hodman is discharged, or reduced to hodbearing ; 
and an architect is hired, and on all hands fitly en- 
couraged ; till communities and individuals discover, 
not without surprise, that fashioning the souls of a 
generation by knowledge can rank on a level with 
blowing their bodies to pieces by gunpowder ; that 
with generals and field-marshals for killing, there 
should be world-honoured dignitaries, and, were it pos- 
sible, true God-ordained priests, for teaching. But 
as yet, though the soldier wears openly, and even 
parades, his butchering-tool, nowhere, far as I have 
travelled, did the schoolmaster make show of his 
instructing-tool ; nay, were he to walk abroad with 
birch girt on thigh, as if he therefrom expected honour, 
would not, among the idler class, a certain levity be 
excited ?" 

In the third year of this gymnastic period, Father 
Andreas seems to have died. The young scholar, 



PEDAGOGY. 113 

otherwise so maltreated, saw himself for the first time 
clad outwardly in sables, and inwardly in quite inex- 
pressible melancholy. " The dark, boundless abyss, 
that lies under our feet, had yawned open ; the pale 
kingdoms of death, with all their innumerable silent 
nations and generations, stood before him ; the inexor- 
able word, Never ! now first showed its meaning. My 
mother wept, and her sorrow got vent; but in my heart 
there lay a whole lake of tears, pent up in silent deso- 
lation. Nevertheless, the unworn spirit is strong; life 
is so healthful that it even finds nourishment in death ; 
these stern experiences, planted down by memory in 
my imagination, rose there to a whole cypress-forest, 
sad but beautiful; waving, with notunmelodious sighs, 
in dark luxuriance, in the hottest sunshine, through 
long years of youth; — as in manhood also it does, 
and will do ; for I have now pitched my tent under a 
cypress-tree ; the tomb is now my inexpugnable fort- 
ress, ever close by the gate of which I look upon the 
hostile armaments, and pains and penalties of tyrannous 
life placidly enough, and listen to its loudest threaten- 
ings with a still smile. ye loved ones, that already 
sleep in the noiseless bed of rest, whom in life I could 
only weep for and never help ; and ye, who wide-scat- 
tered still toil lonely in the monster-bearing desert, 
dyeing the flinty ground with your blood, — yet a little 
while, and we shall all meet There, and our mother's 
bosom will screen us all ; and oppression's harness, and 
sorrow's fire-whip, and all the Gehenna bailiffs that 
patrol and inhabit ever-vexed time, cannot thenceforth 
harm us any more !" 

10* 



114 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Close by which rather beautiful apostrophe lies a 
labored character of the deceased Andreas Futteral ; of 
his natural ability, his deserts in life (as Prussian ser- 
geant) ; with long historical inquiries into the genea- 
logy of the Futteral family, here traced back as far as 
Henry the Fowler ; the whole of which we pass over, 
not without astonishment. It only concerns us to add 
that now was the time when mother Gretchen revealed 
to her foster-son that he was not at all of this kindred ; 
or indeed of any kindred, having come into historical 
existence in the way already known to us. " Thus 
was I doubly orphaned," says he ; " bereft not only of 
possession, but even of remembrance. Sorrow and 
wonder, here suddenly united, could not but produce 
abundant fruit. Such a disclosure, in such a season, 
struck its roots through my whole nature ; ever till the 
years of mature manhood it mingled with my whole 
thoughts, was as the stem whereon all my day-dreams 
and night-dreams grew. A certain poetic elevation, yet 
also a corresponding civic depression, it naturally im- 
parted ; / was like no other ; in which fixed idea, lead- 
ing sometimes to highest, and oftener to frightfullest re- 
sults, may there not lie the first spring of tendencies, 
that in my life have become remarkable enough ? As 
in birth, so in action, speculation, and social position, 
my fellows are perhaps not numerous." 

In the bag Sagittarius,, as we at length discover, 
Teufelsdrockh has become a university man ; though 
how, when, or of what quality, will nowhere disclose 
itself with the smallest certainty. Few things, in the 
way of confusion and capricious indistinctness, can 



PEDAGOGY. 115 

now surprise our readers ; not even the total want of 
dates, almost without parallel in a biographical work. 
So enigmatic, so chaotic we have always found, and 
must always look to find, these scattered leaves. In 
Sagittarius, however, Teufelsdrockh begins to show 
himself even more than usually Sibylline: fragments 
of all sorts ; scraps of regular memoir, college exer- 
cises, programs, professional testimoniums, milk- 
scores, torn billets, sometimes to appearance of an 
amatory cast; all blown together as if by merest 
chance, henceforth bewilder the same historian. To 
combine any picture of this university, and the sub- 
sequent, years ; much more, to decipher therein any 
illustrative primordial elements of the Clothes-Philo- 
sophy, becomes such a problem as the reader may im- 
agine. 

So much we can see ; darkly, as through the foliage 
of some wavering thicket : a youth of no common en- 
dowment, that has passed happily through childhood, 
less happily, yet still vigorously, through boyhood, 
now at length perfect in "dead vocables." and set 
down, as he hopes, by the living fountain, there to 
superadd ideas and capabilities. From such fountain 
he draws, diligently, thirstily, yet nowise with his whole 
heart, for the water nowise suits his palate ; discourage- 
ments, entanglements, aberrations are discoverable or 
supposable. Nor perhaps are even pecuniary distresses 
wanting; for "the good Gretchen, who, in spite of ad- 
vice from not disinterested relatives, has sent him 
hither, must after a time withdraw her willing but too 
feeble hand." Nevertheless in an atmosphere of 
poverty and manifold chagrin, the humor of that 



116 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 



young soul, what character is in him, first decisively 
reveals itself; and like strong sunshine in weeping 
skies, gives out variety of colors, some of which are 
prismatic. Thus with the aid of time, and of what 
time brings, has the stripling Diogenes Teufelsdrockh 
waxed into manly stature ; and into so questionable 
an aspect, that we ask with new eagerness how he 
specially came by it, and regret anew that there is no 
more explicit answer. Certain of the intelligible and 
partially significant fragments, which are few in num- 
ber, shall be extracted from that Limbo of a paper-bag, 
and presented with the usual preparation. 

As if, in the bag Scorpio, Teufelsdrockh had not 
already expectorated his antipedagogic spleen ; as if, 
from the name Sagittarius, he had thought himself 
called upon to shoot arrows, we here again fall in with 
such matter as this: "The university where I was 
educated still stands vivid enough in my remembrance, 
and I know its name well; which name, however, I, 
from tenderness to existing interests and persons, shall 
in nowise divulge. It is my painful duty to say that, 
out of England and Spain, ours was the worst of all 
hitherto discovered universities. This is indeed a time 
when right education is f as nearly as may be, impossi- 
ble; however, in degrees of wrongness there is no 
limit; nay, I can conceive a worse system than that of 
the Nameless itself; as poisoned victual may be worse 
than absolute hunger. 

"It is written, When the blind lead the blind, both 
shall fall into the ditch; wherefore, in such circumstan- 
ces, may it not sometimes be safer, if both leader and 
led simply — sit still? Had you anywhere in Crim 



PEDAGOGY. 117 

Tartary walled in a square enclosure; furnished it 
with a small, ill-chosen library ; and then turned loose 
into it eleven hundred Christian striplings, to tumble 
about as they listed, from three to seven years ; cer- 
tain persons, under the title of professors, being sta- 
tioned at the gates, to declare aloud that it was a uni- 
versity, and exact considerable admission-fees, — you 
had, not indeed in mechanical structure, yet in spirit 
and result, some imperfect resemblance of our high 
seminary. I say, imperfect; for if our mechanical 
structure was quite other, so neither was our result alto- 
gether the same. Unhappily, we were not in Crim 
Tartary, but in a corrupt European city, full of smoke 
and sin ; moreover, in the middle of a public, which, 
without far costlier apparatus than that of the square 
enclosure, and declaration aloud, you could not be sure 
of gulling. 

" Gullible, however, by fit apparatus, all publics 
are; and gulled, with the most surprising, profit. 
Towards anything like a Statistics of Imposture, in- 
deed, little as yet has been done. With a strange 
indifference, our economists, nigh buried under tables 
for-minor branches of industry, have altogether over- 
looked the grand, all-overtopping hypocrisy branch ; 
as if our whole arts of puffery, of quackery, priest- 
craft, kingcraft, and the innumerable other crafts and 
mysteries of that genus, had not ranked in productive 
industry at all! Can any one, for example, so much 
as say, what moneys, in literature and shoe-blacking, 
are realized by actual instruction and actual jet polish; 
what by fictitious-persuasive proclamation of such : 
specifying, in distinct items, the distributions, circu- 



118 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

lations, disbursements, incomings of said moneys, with 
the smallest approach to accuracy ? But to ask how 
far, in all the several infinitely complected departments 
of social business, in government, education, in man- 
ual, commercial, intellectual fabrication of every sort, 
man's want is supplied by true ware ; how far by the 
mere appearance of true ware; — in other words, to 
what extent, by what methods, with what effects in 
various times and countries deception takes the place 
and wages of performance ; — here, truly, is an inquiry, 
big with results for the future time, but to which hi- 
therto only the vaguest answer can be given. If for the 
present, in our Europe, we estimate the ratio of ware 
to appearance of ware so high even as at one to a 
hundred (which, considering the wages of a pope, 
Russian'autocrat, or English game-preserver, is proba- 
bly not far from the mark), — what almost prodigious 
saving may there not be anticipated, as the Statistics 
of Imposture advances, and so the manufacturing of 
shams (that of realities rising into clearer and clearer 
distinction therefrom) gradually declines, and at length 
becomes all but wholly unnecessary ! 

"This for the coming golden ages. What I had to 
remark, for the present brazen one, is, that in several 
provinces, as in education, polity, religion, where so 
much is wanted in indispensable, and so little can as 
yet be furnished, probably imposture is of sanative, 
anodyne nature, and man's gullibility not his worst 
blessing. Suppose your sinews of war quite broken. 
I mean your military chest insolvent, forage all but 
exhausted ; aud that the whole army is about to mu- 
tiny, disband, and cut your and each other's throat, — • 






PEDAGOGY. 119 

theft were it not well, could you, as if by miracle, pay 
them in any sort of fairy-money, feed them on coagu- 
lated water, or mere imagination of meat ; whereby, 
till the real supply came up, they might be kept to- 
gether, and quiet 1 Such perhaps was the aim of Na- 
ture, who does nothing without aim, in furnishing her 
favourite, man, with this his so omnipotent or rather 
omni-patient talent of being gulled. 

" How beautifully it works, with a little mechanism ; 
nay, almost makes mechanism for itself! These pro- 
fessors in the Nameless lived with ease, with safety, 
by a mere reputation, constructed in past times, and 
then too with no great effort, by quite another class of 
persons ; which reputation, like a strong, brisk-going, 
undershot-wheel, sunk into the general current, bade 
fair, with only a little annual repainting on their part, 
to hold long together, and of its own accord assidu- 
ously grind for them. Happy that it was so for the 
millers ! They themselves needed not to work ; their 
attempts at working, at what they called educating, 
now when I look back on it, rill me with a certain mute 
admiration. 

" Besides all this, we boasted ourselves a rational 
university ; in the highest degree, hostile to mysti- 
cism. Thus was the young vacant mind furnished 
with much talk about progress of the species, dark 
ages, prejudice, and the like ; so that all were quickly 
enough blown out into a state of windy argumenta- 
tiveness ; whereby the better sort must soon end in 
sick, impotent skepticism ; the worser sort explode 
(crepiren) in finished self conceit, and to spiritual 
intents become dead. — But this, too, is portion of 



120 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

mankind's lot. If our era is the era of unbelief, why 
murmur under it ; is there not a better coming, nay 
come ? As in long-drawn systole and long-drawn dias- 
tole, must the period of faith alternate with the period 
of denial ; must the vernal growth, the summer luxuri- 
ance of all opinions, spiritual representations, and cre- 
ations, be followed by, and again follow, the autumnal 
decay, the winter dissolution. For man lives in time, 
has his whole earthly being, endeavour, and destiny 
shaped for him by time ; only in the transitory time- 
symbol is the ever-motionless eternity we stand on 
made manifest. And yet, in such winter-seasons of 
denial, it is for the nobler minded, perhaps, a compa- 
ratively misery to have been born, and to be awake, 
and work ; and for the duller a felicity, if, like hiber- 
nating animals, safe-lodged in some Salamanca univer- 
sity, or Sybaris city, or other superstitious or voluptu- 
ous Castle of Indolence, they can slumber through, in 
stupid dreams, and only awaken when the loud roar- 
ing hailstorms have all done their work, and to our 
prayers and martyrdoms the new spring has been 
vouchsafed." 

That in the environment, here mysteriously enough 
shadowed forth, Teufelsdrockh must have felt ill at 
ease, cannot be doubtful. " The hungry young," he 
says, " looked up to their spiritual nurses ; and, for 
food, were bidden eat the east wind. What vain jar- 
gon of controversial metaphysic, etymology, and me- 
chanical manipulation, falsely named science, was cur- 
rent there, I indeed learned, better perhaps than the 
most. Among eleven hundred Christian youths, there 
will not be wanting some eleven eager to learn. By 



PEDAGOGY. 121 

collision with such, a certain warmth, a certain polish 
was communicated ; by instinct and happy accident, I 
took less to rioting (renommireri) , than to thinking and 
reading, which latter also I was free to do. Nay, from 
the chaos of that liberty, I succeeded in fishing up 
more books, perhaps, than had been known to the very 
keepers thereof. The foundation of a literary life was 
hereby laid. I learned on my own strength, to read 
fluently in almost all cultivated languages, on almost 
all subjects, and sciences ; farther, as man is ever the 
prime object to man, already it was my favourite em- 
ployment to read character in speculation, and from the 
writing to construe the writer. A certain ground-plan 
of human nature and life began to fashion itself in me ; 
wondrous enough, now when I look back on it; for my 
whole universe, physical and spiritual, was as yet a 
machine ! However, such a conscious, recognised 
ground-plan, the truest I had, was beginning to be 
there, and by additional experiments might be corrected 
and indefinitely extended." 

Thus from poverty does the strong educe nobler 
wealth ; thus in the destitution of the wild desert, does 
our young Ishmael acquire for himself the highest of 
all possessions, that of self-help. Nevertheless a desert 
this was, waste, and howling with savage monsters. 
Teufelsdrockh gives us long details of his " fever-pa- 
roxysms of doubt;" his inquiries concerning miracles, 
and the evidences of religious faith ; and how " in the 
silent night-watches, still darker in his heart than over 
sky and earth, he has cast himself before the All-see- 
ing, and with audible prayers cried vehemently for 
light, for deliverance from death and the grave. Not 

11 



122 SARTOR RESAKTIJS. 

till after long years, and unspeakable agonies, did the 
believing heart surrender ; sink into spell-bound sleep, 
under the nightmare, unbelief; and, in this hag-ridden 
dream, mistake God's fair, living world for a palid, 
vacant Hades and extinct Pandemonium. But through 
such Purgatory pain," continues he, " it is appointed 
us to pass. First must the dead letter of religion own 
itself dead, and drop piecemeal into dust, if the living 
spirit of religion, freed from this its charnal-house, is 
to arise on us, newborn of heaven, and with new heal- 
ing under its wings." 

To which Purgatory pains, seemingly severe enough, 
if we add a liberal measure of earthly distresses, want 
of practical guidance, want of sympathy, want of 
money, want of hope ; and all this in the fervid season 
of youth, so exaggerated in imagining, so boundless in 
desires, yet here so poor in means, — do we not see a 
strong incipient spirit oppressed and overloaded from 
without and from within ; the fire of genius struggling 
up among fuel-wood of the greenest, and as yet with 
more of bitter vapor than of cleai flame ? 

From various fragments of letters and other doc- 
umentary scraps, it is to be inferred that Teufels- 
drockh, isolated, shy, retiring as he was, had not alto- 
gether escaped notice. Certain established men are 
aware of his existence ; and, if stretching out no help- 
ful hand, have at least their eyes on him. He appears, 
though in dreary enough humor, to be addressing him- 
self to the profession of law; — whereof, indeed, the 
world has since seen him a public graduate. But 
omitting these broken, unsatisfactory thrums of eco- 
nomical relation, let us present rather the following 



PEDAGOGY. 123 

small thread of moral relation ; and therewith, the 
reader for himself weaving it in at the right place, 
conclude our dim arras-picture of these university 
years. 

" Here also it was that I formed acquaintance with 
Herr Towgood, or, as it is perhaps better written, 
Herr Toughgut; a young person of quality (von 
Mel), from the interior parts of England. He stood 
connected, by blood and hospitality, with the Counts 
von Zahdarm, in this quarter of Germany ; to which 
noble family I likewise was, by his means, with all 
friendliness brought near. Towgood had a fair 
talent, unspeakably ill-cultivated; with considerable 
humor of character ; and, bating his total ignorance, 
for he knew nothing except boxing and a little gram- 
mar, showed less of that aristocratic impassivity and 
silent fury than for most part belongs to travellers of 
his nation. To him I owe my first practical know- 
ledge of the English] and their ways ; perhaps also 
something of the partiality with which I have ever 
since regarded that singular people. Towgood was 
not without an eye, could he have come at any light. 
Invited, doubtless, by the presence of the Zahdarm 
family, he had travelled hither, in the almost frantic 
hope of perfecting his studies ; he, whose studies had 
been as yet those of infancy, hither to a university 
where so much as the notion of perfection, not to say 
the effort after it, no longer existed ! Often we would 
condole over the hard destiny of the young in this 
era; how, after all our toil, we were to be turned out 
into the world, with beards on jour chins, indeed, but 
with few other attributes of manhood; no existing 



124 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

thing that we were trained to act on, nothing that we 
could so much as believe. * How has our head on 
the outside a polished hat,' would Towgood exclaim, 
' and in the inside vacancy, or a froth of vocables and 
attorney-logic ! At a small cost men are educated 
to make leather into shoes ; but, at a great cost, what 
am I educated to make 1 By Heaven, brother ! what 
I have already eaten and worn, as I came thus far, 
would endow a considerable Hospital of Incurables.' 
— 'Man, indeed,' I would answer, 'has a digestive 
faculty, which must be kept working, were it even 
partly by stealth. But as for our miseducation, make 
not bad worse ; waste not the time, yet ours, in tramp- 
ling on thistles because they have yielded us no figs. 
Frisch zu, Bruder! Here are books, and we have 
brains to read them; here is a whole earth and a 
whole heaven, and we have eyes to look on them ; 
Frisch zuP 

" Often also our talk was gay ; not without bril- 
liancy, and even fire. We looked out on life, with 
its strange scaffolding, where all at once harlequins 
dance, and men are beheaded and quartered ; motley, 
not unterrific was the aspect; but we looked on it 
like brave youths. For myself, these were perhaps 
my most genial hours. Towards this young, warm- 
hearted, strong-headed, and wrong-headed Herr Tow- 
good, I was even near experiencing the now obsolete 
sentiment of friendship. Yes, foolish heathen that 
I was, I felt that, under certain conditions, I could 
have loved this man, and taken him to my bosom, and 
been his brother once and always. By degrees, how- 
ever, I understood the new time, and its wants. If 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 125 

man's soul is indeed, as in the Finnish language, and 
utilitarian philosophy, a kind of stomach, what else is 
the true meaning of spiritual union but an eating 
together? Thus we, instead of friends, are dinner- 
guests ; and here, as elsewhere, have cast away chime- 
ras." 

So ends, abruptly as is usual, and enigmatically, 
this little incipient romance. What henceforth becomes 
of the brave Herr Towgood, or Toughgut? He has 
dived under, in the autobiographical chaos, and swims 
we see not where. Does any reader " in the interior 
parts of England" know of such a man? 



CHAPTER IV. 

GETTING UNDER WAY. 

" Thus nevertheless," writes our autobiographer, 
apparently as quitting college, " was there realized 
somewhat ; namely, I, Diogenes Teufelsdrockh ; a 
visible, temporary figure (Zeitbild), occupying some 
cubit feet of space, and containing within its forces 
both physical and spiritual ; hopes, passions, thoughts; 
the whole wondrous furniture, in more or less perfec- 
tion, belonging to that mystery, a man. Capabilities 
there were in me to give battle, in some small degree, 
against the great empire of darkness. Does not the 
very ditcher and delver, with his spade, extinguish 
many a thistle and puddle ; and so leave a little order y 
where he found the opposite ? Nay, your very day- 

11* 



126 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

moth has capabilities in this kind ; and ever organizes 
something (into its own body, if no otherwise), which 
was before inorganic; and of mnte, dead air makes 
living music, though only of the faintest, by humming. 

" How much more, one whose capabilities are 
spiritual; who has learned or begun learning the 
grand thaumaturgic art of thought! Thaumaturgic, 
I name it; for hitheito all miracles have been wrought 
thereby, and henceforth innumerable will be wrought ; 
whereof we, even in these days, witness some. Of 
the poet's and prophet's inspired message, and how it 
makes and unmakes whole worlds, I shall forbear 
mention; but cannot the dullest hear steam-engines 
clanking around him ? Has he not seen the Scottish 
brass-smith's Idea (and this but a mechanical one) 
travelling on fire-wings round the cape, and across two 
oceans ; and stronger than any other enchanter's 
familiar, on all hands unweariedly fetching and carry- 
ing; at home, not only weaving cloth; but rapidly 
enough overturning the whole old system of society; 
and, for feudalism and preservation of the game, pre- 
paring us, by indirect but sure methods, industrialism 
and the government of the wisest. Truly, a thinking 
man is the worst enemy the Prince of Darkness can 
have ; every time such a one announces himself, I 
doubt not, there runs a shudder through the nether 
empire ; and new emissaries are trained, with new 
tactics, to, if possible, entrap him, and hoodwink and 
handcuff him. 

" With such high vocation had I too, as denizen of 
the universe, been called. Unhappily it is, however, 
that, though born to the amplest sovereignty, in this 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 127 

way, with no less than sovereign right of peace and 
war against the Time-Prince (Zeitfurst), or Devil, and 
all his dominions, your coronation ceremony costs 
such trouble, your sceptre is so difficult to get at, or 
even to get eye on !" 

By which last wiredrawn similitude, does Teufels- 
drockh mean no more than that young men find obsta- 
cles in what we call "getting under way?" "Not 
what I have," continues he, "but what I do is my 
kingdom. To each is given a certain inward talent, 
a certain outward environment of fortune; to each, 
by wisest combination of these two, a certain maxi- 
mum of capability. But the hardest problem were 
ever this first: To find, by study of yourself, and of 
the ground you stand on, what your combined inward 
and outward capability specially is. For, alas, our 
young soul is all budding with capabilities, and we 
see not yet which is the main and true one. Always, 
too, the new man is in a new time, under new condi- 
tions ; his course can be the facsimile of no prior 
one, but is by its nature original. And then how 
seldom will the outward capability fit the inward! 
though talented wonderfully enough, we are poor, 
unfriended, dyspeptical, bashful; nay, what is worse 
than all, we are foolish. Thus, in a whole imbroglio 
of capabilities, we go stupidly groping about, to grope 
which is ours, and often clutch the wrong one. In 
this mad work must several years of our small term 
be spent, till the purblind youth, by practice, acquire 
notions of distance, and become a seeing man. Nay, 
many so spend their whole term, and in ever new ex- 
pectation, ever new disappointment, shift from enter- 



128 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

prise to enterprise, and from side to side; till, at 
length, as exasperated striplings of threescore and 
ten, they shift into their last enterprise, that of getting 
buried. 

" Such, since the most of us are too ophthalmic, 
would be the general fate; were it not that one 
thing saves us ; our hunger. For on this ground, as 
the prompt nature of hunger is well known, must a 
prompt choice be made. Hence have we, with wise 
foresight, indentures and apprenticeships for our irra- 
tional young; whereby, in due season, the vague 
universality of a man shall find himself ready-moulded 
into a specific craftsman; and so thenceforth work, 
with much or with little waste of capability, as it may 
be ; yet not with the worst waste, that of time. Nay, 
even in matters spiritual, since the spiritual artist, too, 
is born blind, and does not, like certain other crea- 
tures, receive sight in nine days, but far later, some- 
times never, — is it not well that there should be what 
we call professions, or bread-studies (Brodtzwecke), 
preappointed us? Here, circling like the gin-horse, 
for whom partial or total blindness is no evil, the 
bread-artist can travel contentedly round and round, 
still fancying that it is forward and forward, and 
realize much ; for himself victual ; for the world an 
additional horse's power in the grand corn-mill or 
hemp-mill of Economic Society. For me, too, had 
such a leading-string been provided; only that it 
proved a neck-halter, and had nigh throttled me, till 
I broke it off. Then, in the words of Ancient Pistol, 
did the world generally become mine oyster, which I, 
by strength or cunning, was to open, as I would and 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 129 

could. Almost had I deceased {fast war ich umge- 
kommen), so obstinately did it continue shut." 

We see here, significantly foreshadowed, the spirit 
of much that was to befall our Autobiographer ; the 
historical embodyment of which, as it painfully takes 
shape in this life, lies scattered, in dim, disastrous 
details, through this bag Pisces, and those that follow. 
A young man of high talent, and high though still 
temper, like a young mettled colt, " breaks off his 
neck-halter," and bounds forth, from his peculiar man- 
ger, into the wide world ; which alas, he finds all 
rigorously fenced in. Richest clover-fields tempt his 
eye ; but to him they are forbidden pasture ; either 
pining in progressive starvation, he must stand ; or, 
in mad exasperation, must rush to and fro, leaping 
against sheer stonewalls, which he cannot leap over, 
which only lacerate and lame him ; till, at last, after 
thousand attempts and endurances, he, as if by miracle, 
clears his way ; not, indeed, into luxuriant and luxuri- 
ous clover, yet into a certain bosky wilderness, where 
existence is still possible, and freedom, though waited 
on by scarcity, is not without sweetness. In a word, 
Teufelsdrockh, having thrown up his legal profession, 
finds himself without landmark of outward guidance ; 
whereby his previous want of decided belief, or in- 
ward guidance, is frightfully aggravated. Necessity 
urges him on ; time will not stop, neither can he, a son 
of time ; wild passions without solacement, wild facul- 
ties without employment ever vex and agitate him. 
He, too, must enact that stern monodrama, No Object 
and no Best ; must front its successive destinies, work 



130 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

through to its catastrophe, and deduce therefrom what 
moral he can. 

Yet let us be just to him ; let us admit that his 
" neck-halter" sat nowise easy on him ; that he was 
in some degree forced to break it off. If we look at 
the young man's civic position in this nameless capi- 
tal, as he emerges from its nameless university, we can 
discern well that it was far from enviable. His first 
law examination he has come through triumphantly ; 
and can even boast that the Examen Rigorosum 
need not have frightened him. But though he is hereby 
"an Auscultator of respectability," what avails it? 
There is next to no employment to be had. Neither, 
for a youth without connexions, is the process of ex- 
pectation very hopeful in itself; nor for one of his 
disposition much cheered from without. " My fellow 
Auscultators," he says, " were Auscultators ; they 
dressed, and digested, and talked articulate words ; 
other vitality showed they almost none. Small specu- 
lation in those eyes, that they did glare withal ! Sense 
neither for the high nor for the deep, nor for ought 
human or divine, save only for the faintest scent of 
coming preferment." In which words, indicating a 
total estrangement on the part of Teufelsdrockh, may 
there not also lurk traces of a bitterness as from wounded 
vanity ? Doubtless, these prosaic Auscultators may 
have sniffed at him, with his strange ways ; and tried 
to hate, and, what was much more impossible, to des- 
pise him. Friendly communion, in any case, there 
could not be ; already has the young Teufelsdrockh left 
the other young geese ; and swims apart, though as yet 
uncertain whether he himself is cygnet or gosling. 



GETTING tNDER WAY. 131 

Perhaps, too, what little employment he had was 
performed ill, at best unpleasantly. " Great practical 
method and expertness" he may brag of; but is there 
not also great practical pride, though deep-hidden, 
only the deeper-seated ? So shy a man can never have 
been popular. We figure to ourselves how in those 
days he may have played strange freaks with his inde- 
pendence, and so forth ; do not his own words betoken 
as much ? " Like a very young person, I imagined it 
was with work alone, and not also with folly and sin, 
in myself and others, that I had been appointed to 
struggle." Be this as it may, his progress from the 
passive Auscultatorship, towards any active Asses- 
sorship, is evidently of the slowest. By degrees, 
those same established men, once partially inclined to 
patronize him, seem to withdraw their countenance, and 
give him up as " a nian of genius;" against which pro- 
cedure he in these papers loudly protests. " As if," 
says he, "the higher did not presuppose the lower; as 
if he who can fly into heaven, could not also walk post 
if he resolved on it ! But the world is an old woman, 
and mistakes any gilt farthing for a gold coin ; whereby 
being often cheated, she will thenceforth trust nothing 
but the common copper." 

How our winged sky-messenger, unaccepted as a 
terrestrial runner, contrived, in the meanwhile, to keep 
himself from flying skyward without return, is not 
too clear from these documents. Good old Gretchen 
seems to have vanished from the scene, perhaps from 
the earth. Other Horn of Plenty, or even of Parsi- 
mony, nowhere flows for him ; so that, " the prompt 
nature of hunger being well known," we are not with- 



132 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

out our anxiety. From private tuition, in never so 
many languages and sciences, the aid derivable is 
small ; neither, to use his own words, " does the 
young adventurer hitherto suspect in himself any lite- 
rary gift ; but, at best, earns bread and water wages by 
his wide faculty of translation. Nevertheless," con- 
tinues he, " that I subsisted is clear, for you find me 
even now alive." Which fact, however, except upon 
the principle of our true-hearted, kind old proverb, that 
" there is ever life for the living," we must profess 
ourselves unable to explain. 

Certain landlords' bills, and other economic docu- 
ments, bearing the mark of settlement, indicate that 
he was not without money ; but, like an independent 
hearth-holder, if not house-holder, paid his way. 
Here also occur, among many others, two little muti- 
lated notes, which perhaps throw light on his condi- 
tion. The first has now no date, or writer's name, 
but a huge blot ; and runs to this effect : " The 
(Inkblot), tied down by previous promise, cannot, 
except by best wishes, forward the Herr Teufels- 
drockh's views on the Assessorship in question; and 
sees himself under the cruel necessity of forbearing 
for the present, what were otherwise his duty and 
joy, to assist in opening the career for a man of genius, 
on whom far higher triumphs are yet waiting." The 
other is on gilt paper ; and interests us like a sort of 
epistolary mummy now dead, yet which once lived 
and beneficently worked. We give it in the original : 
" Herr Teufelsdrockh wirdvon der Frau Grajinn, atif 
Donnerstagi zum JEsthetischen Thee, schonstens 
eingeladen." 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 133 

Thus, in answer to a cry For solid pudding, whereof 
there is the most urgent need, comes, epigrammati- 
cally enough, the invitation to a wash of quite fluid 
JEsthetic Tea ! How Teufelsdrockh, now at actual 
handgrips with Destiny herself, may have comported 
himself among these musical and literary dilettanti of 
both sexes, like a hungry lion invited to a feast of 
chickenweed, we can only conjecture. Perhaps in 
expressive silence, and abstinence; otherwise, if the 
lion, in such case, is to feast at all, it cannot be on 
the chickenweed, but only on the chickens. For the 
rest, as this Frau Grafinn dates from the Zahdarm 
House, she can be no other than the countess and 
mistress of the same; whose intellectual tendencies, 
and good-will to Teufelsdrockh, whether on the foot- 
ing of Herr Towgood, or on his own footing, are 
hereby manifest. That some sort of relation, indeed, 
continued, for a time, to connect our Autobiographer, 
though perhaps feebly enough, with this noble house, 
We have elsewhere express evidence. Doubtless, if 
he expected patronage, it was in vain ; enough for him 
if he here obtained occasional glimpses of the great 
world, from which we at one time fancied him to have 
been always excluded. "The Zahdarms," says he, 
"lived in the soft, sumptuous garniture of aristocracy ; 
whereto literature and art, attracted and attached 
from without, must serve as the handsomest fringing. 
It was to the Gnadigen Frau (her ladyship) that 
this latter improvement was due; assiduously she 
gathered, dexterously she fitted on, what fringing was 
to be had ; lace or cobweb, as the place yielded." 
Was Teufelsdrockh also a fringe, of lace or cobweb ; 

12 



134 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

or promising to be such? "With His JExcellenz 
(the Count)," continues he, "I have more than once 
had the honor to converse ; chiefly on general affairs, 
and the aspect of the world, which he, though now 
past middle life, viewed in no unfavorable light ; 
finding, indeed, except the outrooting of journalism 
{die auszurottende Journalistic), little to desiderate 
therein. On some points, as his Excellenz was not 
uncholeric, I found it more pleasant to keep silence. 
Besides, his occupation being that of owning land, 
there might be faculties enough, which, as superfluous 
for such use, were little developed in him." 

That to Teufelsdrockh the aspect of the world was 
nowise so faultless, and many things, besides " the 
outrooting of journalism," might have seemed im- 
provements, we can readily conjecture. With nothing 
but a barren Auscultatorship from without, and so 
many mutinous thoughts and wishes from within, his 
position was no easy one. " The universe," he says, 
"was as a mighty Sphinx-riddle, which I knew so 
little of, yet must rede, or be devoured. In red streaks 
of unspeakable grandeur, yet also in the blackness of 
darkness, was life, to my too unfurnished thought, 
unfolding itself. A strange contradiction lay in me ; 
and I as yet knew not the solution of it ; knew not 
that spiritual music can spring only from discords set 
in unison ; that but for evil there were no good, as 
victory is only possible by battle." 

"I have heard affirmed (surely in jest)," observes he 
elsewhere, " by not nnphilanthropic persons, that it 
were a real increase of human happiness, could all 
young men from the age of nineteen be covered under 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 135 

barrels, or rendered otherwise invisible ; and there left 
to follow their lawful studies and callings, till they 
emerged, sadder and wiser, at the age of twenty-five ; 
with which suggestion, at least as considered in the 
light of a practical scheme, I need scarcely say that 
I nowise coincide. Nevertheless it is plausibly urged 
that, as young ladies, (Madchen) are to mankind pre- 
cisely the most delightful in those years; so young 
gentlemen (Biibchen) do then attain their maximum 
of detestability. Such gawks (Gecken) are they, and 
foolish peaeocks, and yet with such a vulturous hunger 
for self-indulgence ; so obstinate, obstreperous, vain- 
glorious ; in all senses, so froward and so forward : no 
mortal's endeavour or attainment will, in the smallest 
content the as yet unendeavouring, unattaining young 
gentleman ; but he could make it all infinitely better, 
were it worthy of him. Life everywhere is the most 
manageable matter, simple as a question in the Rule 
of Three; multiply your second and third term to- 
gether, divide the product by the first, and your quo- 
tient will be the answer, — which you are but an ass 
if you cannot come at. The booby has not yet found 
out, by any trial, that, do what one will, there is ever 
a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no 
net integer quotient so much as to be thought of." 

In which passage, does there not lie an implied 
confession that Teufelsdrb'ckh himself, besides his 
outward obstructions, had an inward, still greater, to 
contend with ; namely, a certain temporary, youthful, 
yet still afflictive derangement of head ? Alas ! on 
the former side alone, his case was hard enough. " It 
continues ever true," says he, "that Saturn, or Chro- 



136 SARTOR RESARTUS, 

nos, or what we call Time, devours all his children ; 
only by incessant running, by incessant working, may 
you (for some threescore and ten years) escape him ; 
and you, too, he devours at last. Can any sovereign, 
or holy alliance of sovereigns, bid time stand still; 
even in thought, shake themselves free of time? Our 
whole terrestrial being is based on time, and built of 
time ; it is wholly a movement, a time impulse ; time 
is the author of it, the material of it* Hence also our 
whole duty, which is to move, to work, — in the right 
direction. Are not our bodies and our souls in contin- 
ual movement, whether we will or not; in a continual 
waste, requiring a continual repair 1 Utmost satisfac- 
tion of our whole outward and inward wants weie but 
satisfaction for a space of time ; thus whatso we have 
done is done, and for us annihilated, and ever must 
we go and do anew. O Time-Spirit ; how hast thou 
environed and imprisoned us, and sunk us so deep in 
tl>y troublous, dim time-element, that, only in lucid 
moments, can so much as glimpses of our upper azure 
home be revealed to us ! Me, however, as a son of 
time, unhappier than some others, was time threaten- 
ing to eat quite prematurely ; for, strive as I might, 
there was no good running, so obstructed was the path, 
so gyved were the feet." That is to say, we presume, 
speaking in the dialect of this lower world, that Teu- 
felsdrockh's whole duty and necessity were, like other 
men's "to work, — in the right direction," and that 
no work was to be had ; whereby he became wretched 
enough. As was natural ; wkh haggard scarcity threat- 
ening him in the distance; and so vehement a soul Ian- 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 137 

guishing in restless inaction, and forced thereby, like 
Sir Hudibras's sword by rust, 

To eat into itself, for lack 

Of something else to hew and hack ! 

But on the whole, that same "excellent passivity," 
as it has all along done, is here again vigorously 
flourishing ; in which circumstance, may we not trace 
the beginnings of much that now characterizes our 
Professor ; and perhaps, in faint rudiments, the origin 
of the Clothes-Philosophy itself? Already the attitude 
he has assumed towards the world is too defensive ; 
not, as would have been desirable, a bold attitude 
of attack. "So far, hitherto," he says, "as I had 
mingled with mankind, I was notable, if for anything, 
for a certain stillness of manner, which, as my friends 
often rebukingly declared, did but ill express the keen 
ardor of my feelings. I, in truth, regarded men with 
an excess both of love and of fear. The mystery of 
a person, indeed, is ever divine, to him that has a 
sense for the godlike. Often, notwithstanding, was 
I blamed, and by half-strangers hated, for my so- 
called hardness (Htirte), my indirTerentism towards 
men, and the seemingly ironic tone I had adopted, as 
my favorite dialect in conversation. Alas, the panoply 
of sarcasm was but as a buckram-case, wherein I had 
striven to envelop myself; that so my own poor 
person might live safe there ; and in all friendliness, 
being no longer exasperated by wounds. Sarcasm I 
now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; 
for which reason I have, long since, as good as re- 
nounced it. But how many individuals did I, in those 
days, provoke into some degree of hostility thereby ! 

12* 



138 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

An ironic man, with his sly stillness, and ambuscading 
ways, more especially an ironic young man, from 
whom it is least expected, may be viewed as a pest to 
society. Have we not seen persons of weight and 
name, coming forward, with gentlest indifference, to 
tread such a one out of sight, as an insignificancy and 
worm, start ceiling-high (balkenhoch), and thence fall 
shattered and supine, to be borne home on shutters, 
not without indignation, when he proved electric and a 
torpedo !" 

Alas, how can a man with this devilishness of tem- 
per make way for himself in life; where the first 
problem, as Teufelsdrockh, too, admits, is "to unite 
yourself with some one and with somewhat (sich 
anzuschliessen) ?" Division, not union, is written on 
most part of his procedure. Let us add, too, that, in 
no great length of time, the only important connexion 
he had ever succeeded in foiming, his connexion with 
the Zahdarm family, seems to have been paralyzed, 
for all practical uses, by the death of the "not unchol- 
eric" old Count. This fact stands recorded, quit© 
incidentally, in a certain Discourse on Epitaphs, hud- 
dled into the present bag, among so much else ; of which 
essay the learning and curious penetration are more to 
be approved of than the spirit. His grand principle 
is, that lapidary inscriptions, of what sort soever, 
should be historical rather than lyrical. "By request 
of that worthy nobleman's survivors," says he, "I un- 
dertook to compose his epitaph; and, not unmindful 
of my own rules, produced the following; which, 
however, for an alleged defect of Latinity, a defect 
never yet fully visible to myself, still remains unen- 



GETTING UNDER WAY. 139 

graven;" — wherein, we may predict, there is more 
than the Latinity that will surprise an English reader. 

HIC JACET 

PHILIPPUS ZAEHDARM, COGNOMINE MAGNUS, 

Zaehdabmi Comes, 

ex impebii concilio, 

ye1eebis aubei, pebiscexidis, necnon ytretubis nigri 

EQ.17ES. 
Q.TTI DUM StTB XTTBiA AGEBAT, 

QUINQUIES MILLE PERDICES 

PXTTMBO CONFECIT : 

VARII CIBI 

CENTUMPONBIA MIEEIES CENTE3JA MII1IA, 

PER SE, PEBQJTE SeBYOS Q.l T ADBTTPEBES BIPEBESYE, 

HATJB SIJfE TUMULTU DEVOLYEH'S, 

IN STERCUS 

PALAM CONYEBTIT. 

NVTSC A EABOBE BEaUIESCEKTEltf 
OPEBA SEaTTUNTTJB. 

SI MONTTMEKTUM QJJiEBIS 
FIMETUM ADSPICE. 

PRIMUM IX OBBE DEJECIT [S7tb ddto] ', 
POSTEEMUM [sub ddto]. 




140 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

CHAPTER V. 

ROMANCE. 

" For long years," writes Teufelsdrockh, " had the 
poor Hebrew, in this Egypt of an Auscultatorship, 
painfully toiled, baking bricks without stubble, before 
ever the question once struck him with entire force : 
For what? — Beym Himmel! For food and warmth! 
And are food and warmth nowhere ^else, in the whole 
wide universe, discoverable ? — Come of it what might, 
I resolved to try." 

Thus, then, are we to see him in a new, independent 
capacity, though, perhaps, far from an improved one. 
Teufelsdrockh is now a man without profession. 
Quitting the common fleet of herring-busses and 
whalers, where, indeed, his leeward, laggard condition 
was painful enough, he desperately steers off, on a 
course of his own, by sextant and compass of his own. 
Unhappy Teufelsdrockh ! Though neither fleet, nor 
traffic, nor commodores pleased thee, still was it not 
a Jleet, sailing in prescribed track, for fixed objects; 
above all, in combination, wherein, by mutual guid- 
ance, by all manner of loans and borrowings, each 
could manifoldly aid the other? How wilt thou sail 
in unknown seas; and for thyself find that shorter, 
northwest passage to thy fair spice-country of a No- 
where?— A solitary rover, on such a voyage, with 
such nautical tactics, will meet with adventures. Nay, 
as we forthwith discover, a certain Calypso-Island 
detains him at the very outset; and, as it were, falsi- 
fies and oversets his whole reckoning. 



ROMANCE. 141 

" If in youth," writes he once, " the universe is 
majestically unveiling, and everywhere heaven re- 
vealing itself on earth, nowhere to the young man 
does this heaven on earth so immediately reveal itself 
as in the young maiden. Strangely enough, in this 
strange life of ours, it has been so appointed. On 
the whole, as I have often said, a Person (Person- 
lichkeit) is ever holy to us ; a certain orthodox An- 
thropomorphism connects my Me with all Thees in 
bonds of love ; but it is in this approximation of the 
like and unlike, that such heavenly attraction, as be- 
tween negative and positive, first burns out into a 
flame. Is the pitifullest mortal person, think you, 
indifferent to us ? Is it not rather our heartfelt wish 
to be made one with him ; to unite him to us, by 
gratitude, by admiration, even by fear ; or, failing all 
these, unite ourselves to him ? But how much more, 
in this case of the like-unlike ! Here is conceded us 
the higher mystic possibility of such a union, the 
highest in our earth ; thus, in the conducting medium 
of fantasy, flames forth that ^re-development of the 
universal spiritual electricity, which, as unfolded 
between man and woman, we first emphatically de- 
nominate Love. 

" In every well-conditioned stripling, as I conjec- 
ture, there already blooms a certain prospective Para- 
dise, cheered by some fairest Eve. Nor in the stately 
vistas, and flowerage, and foliage of that Garden, is a 
Tree of Knowledge, beautiful and awful in the midst 
thereof, wanting. Perhaps, too, the whole is but the 
lovelier if Cherubim and a Flaming Sword divide it 
from all footsteps of men, and grant him, the imagi- 



142 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

native stripling, only the view, not the entrance. 
Happy season of virtuous youth, when shame is still 
an impassable, celestial barrier ; and the sacred air- 
cities of hope have not shrunk into the mean clay-ham- 
lets of reality ; and man, by his nature, is yet infinite 
and free ! 

"As for our young Forlorn," continues Teufels- 
drockh, evidently meaning himself, " in his secluded 
way of life, and with his glowing fantasy, the more 
fiery that it burnt under cover, as in a reverberating 
furnace, his feeling towards the queens of this earth 
was, and indeed is, altogether unspeakable. A visible 
divinity dwelt in them ; to our young friend all women 
were holy, were heavenly. As yet he but saw them 
flitting past, in their many-colored angel-plumage ; or 
hovering mute and inaccessible on the outskirts of 
JEsthetic Tea. All of air they were, all soul and 
form ; so lovely, like mysterious priestesses, in whose 
hand was the invisible Jacob' s-Ladder, whereby man 
might mount into very heaven. That he, our poor 
friend, should ever win for himself one of these graee- 
fuls (Holderi) — Ach GottJ how could he hope it; 
should he not have died under it ? There was a cer- 
tain delirious vertigo in the thought. 

" Thus was the young man, if all-skeptical of 
demonds and angels, such as the vulgar had once 
believed in, nevertheless not unvisited by hosts of true 
skyborn, who visibly and audibly hovered round him, 
whereso he went ; and they had that religious worship 
in his thought, though as yet it was by their mere 
earthly and trivial name that he named them. But 
now, if on a soul so circumstanced, some actual air- 



ROMANCE. 143 

maiden, incorporated into tangibility and reality, 
should cast any electric glance of kind eyes, saying 
thereby, * Thou, too, mayest love and be loved ;' and 
so kindle him, — good Heaven, what a volcanic, 
earthquake-bringing, all-consuming fire were probably 
kindled I" 

Such a fire, it afterwards appears, did actually burst 
forth, with explosions more or less Vesuvian, in the 
inner man of Herr Diogenes ; as, indeed, how could it 
fail? A nature, which, in his own figurative style, 
we might say, had now not a little carbonized tinder 
of irritability ; with so much nitre of latent passion, 
and sulphurous humor enough ; the whole lying in such 
hot neighbourhood, close by " a reverberating furnace 
of fantasy:" have we not here the components of 
driest gunpowder, ready, on occasion of the smallest 
spark, to blaze up? Neither, in this our life-element, 
are sparks anywhere wanting. Without doubt, some 
angel, whereof so many hovered round, must one day, 
leaving " the" outskirts of ^Esthetic Tea, flit nigher ; 
and, by electric, Promethean glance, kindle no despi- 
cable firework. Happy, if it indeed proved a firework, 
and flamed off rocket-wise, in successive beautiful 
bursts of splendor, each growing naturally from the 
other, through the several stages of a happy youthful 
love ; till the whole were safely burnt out ; and the 
young soul relieved, with little damage ! Happy, if it 
did not rather prove a conflagration and mad explo- 
sion ; painfully lacerating the heart itself ; nay, per- 
haps bursting the heart in pieces (which were death); 
or, at best, bursting the thin walls of your " reverbera- 
ting furnace," so that it rage thenceforth all unchecked 



144 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

among the contiguous combustibles (which were mad- 
ness); till of the so fair and manifold internal world 
of our Diogenes, there remained nothing, or only the 
"crater of an extinct volcano !" 

From multifarious documents in this bag Capricor- 
nus, and in the adjacent ones on both sides thereof, 
it becomes manifest that our Philosopher, as stoical 
and cynical as he now looks, was heartily and even 
franticly in love ; here, therefore, may our old doubts, 
whether his heart were of stone or of flesh, give way. 
He loved once ; not wisely, but too well. And once 
only. For as your Congreve needs a new case or 
wrappage for # every new rocket, so each human heart 
can properly exhibit but one love, if even one ; the 
'* first love, which is infinite," can be followed by no 
second like unto it. In more recent years, accord- 
ingly, the Editor of these sheets was led to regard 
Teufelsdrockh as a man, not only who would never 
wed, but who would never even flirt ; whom the grand- 
climacteric itself, and St. Martin's Summer of incipi- 
ent dotage, would crown with no new myrtle garland. 
To the Professor, women are henceforth pieces of 
art ; of celestial art, indeed ; which celestial pieces he 
glories to survey in galleries, but has lost thought of 
purchasing. 

Psychological readers are not without curiosity to 
see how Teufelsdrockh, in this for him unexampled 
predicament, demeans himself; with what specialties 
of successive configuration, splendor, and color, his 
firework blazes ofT. Small, as usual, is the satisfac- 
tion that such can meet with here. From amid these 
confused masses of eulogy, and elegy, with their mad 



ROMANCE. 145 

Petrarchan and Werterean ware lying madly scattered 
among all sorts of quite extraneous matter, not so 
much as the fair one's name can be deciphered. For, 
without doubt, the title Blumine, whereby she is here 
designated, and which means simply Goddess of Flow- 
ers, must be fictitious. Was her real name Flora, 
then ? But what was her surname, or had she none ? 
Of what station in life was she ; of what parentage, 
fortune, aspect? Specially, by what preestablished 
harmony of occurrences did the lover and the loved 
meet one another in so wide a world ; how did they 
behave in such meeting? To all which questions, 
not unessential in a biographic work, mere conjecture 
must for most part return answer. " It was appoint- 
ed," says our Philosopher, "that the high, celestial 
orbit of Blumine should intersect the low, subluminary 
one of our Frolorn ; that he, looking in her empyrean 
eyes, should fancy the upper sphere of light was come 
down into this nether sphere of shadows ; and finding 
himself mistaken, make noise enough." 

We seem to gather that she was young, hazel-eyed, 
beautiful, and some one's cousin; highborn, and of 
high spirit ; but, unhappily, dependent and insolvent ; 
living, perhaps, on the not too gracious bounty of 
moneyed relatives. But how came " the Wanderer" into 
her circle ? Was it by the humid vehicle of JEsthetic 
Tea, or by the arid one of mere business ? Was it on 
the hand of Herr Towgood ; or of the Gnadige Frau, 
who, as an ornamental aitist, might sometimes like to 
promote flirtation, especially for young, cynical nonde- 
scripts ? To all appearance, it was chiefly by accident, 
and the grace of nature. 

"Thou fair Waldschloss," writes our Autobiogra- 

13 



146 SARTOR RESAKTUS. 

pher, " what stranger ever saw thee, were it even ail 
absolved Auscultator, officially bearing in his pocket 
the last Relatio ex Jlctis he would ever write ; but 
must have paused to wonder? Noble mansion ! There 
stoodest thou, in deep mountain amphitheatre, on um- 
brageous lawns, in thy serene solitude ; stately, mas- 
sive, all of granite ; glittering in the western sunbeams, 
like a palace of El Dorado, overlaid with precious 
metal. Beautiful rose up, in wavy curvature, the slope 
of thy guardian hills ; of the greenest was their sward, 
embossed with its dark-brown frets of crag, or spotted 
by some spreading, solitary tree and its shadow. To 
the unconscious wayfarer thou wert also as an Am* 
mon's temple, in the Libyan waste ; where, for joy and 
wo, the tablet of his destiny lay written. Well might 
he pause and gaze ; in that glance of his were prophe- 
cy and nameless forebodings. 

But now let us conjecture that the so presentient 
Auscultator has handed in his Relatio ex Actis ; been 
invited to a glass of Rhine-wine ; and so, instead of 
returning dispirited and athirst to his dusty town-home, 
is ushered into the garden-house, where sits the 
choicest party of dames and cavaliers ; if not engaged 
in ^Esthetic Tea, yet in trustful evening conversation, 
and perhaps Musical Coffee, for we hear of " harps 
and pure voices making the stillness live." Scarcely, 
it would seem, is the garden-house inferior in respec- 
tability to the noble mansion itself. " Embowered 
amid rich foliage, rose-clusters, and the hues and 
odors of thousand flowers, here sat that brave com- 
pany ; in front, from the wide-opened doors, fair out- 
look over blossom and bush, over grove and velvet 
green, stretching, undulating onwards to the remote 



ROMANCE. 147 

mountain-peaks ; so bright, so mild, and everywhere 
the melody of birds and happy creatures ; it was all as 
if man had stolen a shelter from the sun in the bosom- 
vesture of summer herself. How came it that the 
Wanderer advanced thither with such forecasting 
heart (ahnimgsvoU), by the side of his gay host? 
Did he feel that to these soft influences his hard bosom 
ought to be shut; that here, once more, Fate had it in 
view to try him, to mock him, and see whether there 
were humor in him ? 

" Next moment he finds himself presented to the 
party ; and specially by name to . Blumine ! Pecu- 
liar among all dames and damosels, glanced Blumine, 
there in her modesty, like a star among earthly 
lights. Noblest maiden ! whom he bent to, in body 
and in soul ; yet scarcely dared look at, for the pres- 
ence filled him with painful yet sweetest embarrass- 
ment. . 

"Blumine's was a name well known to him; far 
and wide, was the fair one heard of, for her gifts, her 
graces, her caprices ; from all which vague colorings 
of rumor, from the censures no less than from the 
praises, had our friend painted for himself a certain 
imperious queen of hearts, and blooming, warm earth- 
angel, much more enchanting than your mere, white 
heaven-angels of women, in whose placid veins 
circulates too little naphtha-fire. Herself also he had 
seen in public places ; that light, yet so stately form ; 
those dark tresses, shading a face where smiles and 
sunlight played over earnest deeps ; but all this he 
had seen only as a magic vision, for him inaccessible, 
almost without reality. Her sphere was too far from 
his ; how should she ever think of him ; heaven ! 



148 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

how should they so much as once meet together ? And 
now that rose-goddess sits in the same circle with him ; 
the light of her eyes has smiled on him ; if he speak, 
she will hear it ! Nay, who knows, since the heaven- 
ly sun looks into lowest valleys, but Blumine herself 
might have aforetime noted the so unnotable ; perhaps, 
from his very gainsayers, as he had from hers, gather- 
ed wonder, gathered favor for him ? Was the attrac- 
tion, the agitation mutual, then ; pole and pole trem- 
bling towards contact, when once brought into 
neighbourhood ? Say rather, heart swelling in pres- 
ence of the queen of hearts; like the sea swelling 
when once near its moon ! With the .Wanderer it was 
even so ; as in heavenward gravitation, suddenly, as at 
the touch of a seraph's wand, his whole soul is roused 
from its deepest recesses ; and all that was painful and 
that was blissful there, dim images, vague feelings of a 
whole Past and a whole Future are heaving in unquiet 
eddies within him. 

" Often, in far less agitating scenes, had our still 
friend shrunk forcibly together ; and shrouded up his 
tremors and flutterings, of what sort soever, in a safe 
cover of silence, and perhaps of seeming stolidity. 
How was it, then, that here, when trembling to the 
core of his heart, he did not sink into swoons, but 
rose into strength, into fearlessness and clearness? It 
was his guiding genius {Damon) that inspired him ; 
he must go forth and meet his destiny. * Show thyself 
now,' whispered it, ' or be forever hid.' Thus some- 
times it is, even when your anxiety becomes transcen- 
dental, that the soul first feels herself able to transcend 
it ; that she rises above it, in fiery victory ; and, borne 
on new-found wings of victory, moves so calmly, even 



ROMANCE. 149 

because so rapidly, so irresistibly. Always must the 
Wanderer remember, with a certain satisfaction and 
surprise, how in this case he sat not silent, but struck 
adroitly into the stream of conversation; which thence- 
forth, to speak with an apparent, not a real vanity, he 
may say that he continued to lead. Surely, in those 
hours, a certain inspiration was imparted him, such 
inspiration as is still possible in our late era. The 
Self-secluded unfolds himself in noble thoughts, in 
free, glowing words ; his soul is as one sea of light, 
the peculiar home of truth and intellect ; wherein also 
fantasy bodies forth form after form, radiant with all 
prismatic hues." 

It appears, in this otherwise so happy meeting, there 
talked one "Philistine;" who even now, to the gen- 
eral weariness, was dominantly pouring forth Philis- 
tinism (Philistriositaten) ; little witting what hero 
was here entering to demolish him ! We omit the 
series of Socratic, or rather Diogenic utterances, not 
unhappy in their way, whereby the monster, "per- 
suaded into silence," seems soon after to have with- 
drawn for the night. " Of which dialectic marauder," 
writes our hero, "the discomfiture was visibly felt 
as a benefit by most; but what were all applauses, to 
the glad smile, threatening every moment to become 
a laugh, wherewith Blumine herself repaid the victor? 
He ventured to address her, she answered with at- 
tention; nay, what if there were a slight tremor in 
that silver voice; what if the red glow of evening 
were hiding a transient blush! 

"The conversation took a higher tone; one fine 
thought called forth another. It was one of those rare 
seasons, when the soul expands with full freedom, and 

13* 



150 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

man feels himself brought near to man. Gaily, in 
light, graceful abandonment, the friendly talk played 
round that circle ; for the burden was rolled from every 
heart; the barriers of ceremony, which are, indeed, 
the laws of polite living, had melted as into vapor ; and 
the poor claims of Me and Thee, no longer parted by 
rigid fences, now flowed softly into one another ; and 
life lay all-harmonious, many-tinted, like some fair 
royal champaign, the sovereign and owner of which 
were Love only. Such music springs from kind 
hearts, in a kind environment of place and time. And 
yet, as the light grew more aerial on the mountain-tops, 
and the shadows fell longer over the valley, some faint 
tone of sadness may have breathed through the heart; 
and, in whispers more or less audible, reminded every 
one that, as this bright day was drawing towards its 
close, so likewise must the day of man's existence 
decline into dusk and darkness ; and with all its sick 

7 ok. 

toilings, and joyful and mournful noises, sink in the 
still eternity. 

"To our friend the hours seemed moments; holy 
was he and happy; the words from those sweetest lips 
came over him like dew on thirsty grass ; all better 
feelings in his soul seemed to whisper, ' It is good for 
us to be here.' At parting, the Blumine's hand was in 
his; in the balmy twilight, with the kind stars above 
them, he spoke something of meeting again, which was 
not contradicted; he pressed gently those small, soft 
lingers, and it seemed as if they were not hastily, not 
angrily withdrawn." 

Poor Teufelsdrockh ! it is clear to demonstration 
thou art smit; the queen of hearts would see a "man 
of genius" also sigh for her; and there, by art magic, 



ROMANCE. 151 

in that preternatural hour, has she bound and spell- 
bound thee. " Love is not altogether a delirium," 
says he elsewhere; "yet has it many points in com- 
mon therewith. I call it rather a discerning of the 
Infinite in the Finite, of the Idea made Real; which 
discerning, again, may be either true or false, either 
seraphic or demoniac, inspiration or insanity. But 
in the former case, too, as in common madness, it is 
fantasy that superadds itself to sight ; on the so petty 
domain of the Actual, plants its Archimedes'-lever, 
whereby to move at will the infinite Spiritual. Fan- 
tasy I might call the true heaven-gate and hell-gate 
of man; his sensuous life is but the small temporary 
stage (Zeitbiihne), whereon thick-streaming influen- 
ces from both these far yet near regions meet visibly 
and act tragedy and melodrama. Sense can support 
herself handsomely, in most countries, for some eigh- 
teen pence a day ; but for fantasy planets and solar 
systems will not suffice. Witness your Pyrrhus con- 
quering the world, yet drinking no better red wine 
than he had before." Alas, witness also your Diogenes, 
flame-clad, scaling the upper heaven, and verging 
towards insanity, for prize of a "high-souled bru- 
nette," as if the earth held but one, and not several of 
these ! 

He says that in town they met again. " Day after 
day, like his heart's sun, the blooming Blumine shone 
on him. Ah ! a little while ago, and he was yet all 
in darkness : him what Graceful (Holde) would ever 
love ? Disbelieving all things, the poor youth had 
never learned to believe in himself. Withdrawn, in 
proud timidity, within his own fastnesses ; solitary 



152 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

from men, yet baited by night-spectres enough, he 
saw himself, with a sad indignation, constrained to 
renounce the fairest hopes of existence. And now, 
O now ! ' She looks on thee,' cried he; 'she, the 
fairest, noblest ; do not her dark eyes tell thee, thou art 
not despised ? The heaven's-messenger ! All heaven's 
blessings be hers !' Thus did soft melodies flow 
through his heart ; tones of an infinite gratitude ; 
sweetest intimations that he also was a man, that for 
him also unutterable joys had been provided. 

"In free speech, earnest or gay, amid lambent 
glances, laughter, tears, and often with the inarticu" 
late, mystic speech of music ; such was the element 
they now lived in ; in such a many-tinted, radiant 
Aurora ; and by this fairest of orient light-bringers 
must our friend be blandished, and the new Apoca- 
lypse of nature unrolled to him. Fairest Blumine ! 
And, even as a star, all fire and humid softness, a very 
light-ray incarnate ! Was there so much as a fault, a 
' caprice,' he could have dispensed with ? Was she 
not to him, in very deed, a morning-star ; did not her 
presence bring with it airs from heaven ? As from 
iEolian harps in the breath of dawn, as from the 
Memnon's statue struck by the rosy finger of Aurora, 
unearthly music was around him, and lapped him into 
untried, balmy rest. Pale doubt fled away to the dis- 
tance ; life bloomed up with happiness and hope. 
The past, then, was all a haggard dream ; he had 
been in the garden of Eden, then, and could not dis- 
cern it ! But lo, now ! the black walls of his prison 
melt away ; the captive is alive, is free. If he loved 
his disenchantress ? Ach Gott J His whole heart 
and soul and life were hers, but never had he named 



ROMANCE. 153 

it Love ; existence was all a feeling, not yet shaped into 
a thought." 

Nevertheless, into a thought, nay into an action, it 
must be shaped ; for neither disenchanter nor disen- 
chantress, mere " children of time," can abide by 
feeling alone. The Professor knows not, to this day, 
" how, in her soft, fervid bosom, the Lovely found 
determination, even on hest of necessity, to cut asunder 
these so blissful bonds." He even appears surprised 
at the " Duenna cousin," whoever she may have 
been, "in whose meagre, hunger-bitten philosophy, 
the religion of young hearts was, from the first, faintly 
approved of." We, even at such distance, can explain 
it without necromancy. Let the Philosopher answer 
this one question : What figure," at that period, was 
a Mrs. Teufelsdrockh likely to make in polished 
society ? Could she have driven so much as a brass- 
bound gig, or even a simple iron-spring one ? Thou 
foolish, " absolved Auscultator," before whom lies no 
prospect of capital, will any yet known " religion of 
young hearts" keep the human kitchen warm ? 
Pshaw! thy divine Blumine, when she "resigned 
herself to wed some richer," shows more philosophy, 
though but " a woman of genius," than thou, a pre- 
tended man. 

Our readers have witnessed the origin of this love- 
mania, and with what royal splendor it waxes and 
rises. Let no one ask us to unfold the glories of its 
dominant state ; much less the horrors of its almost 
instantaneous dissolution. How, from such inorganic 
masses, henceforth madder than ever, as lie in these 
bags, can even fragments of a living delineation be 
organized ? Besides, of what profit were it ? We 
view, with a lively pleasure, the gay silk Montgolfier 




154 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

start from the ground, and shoot upwards, cleaving 
the liquid deeps, till it dwindle to a luminous star ; 
but what is there to look longer on, when once, by 
natural elasticity, or accident of fire, it has exploded ? 
A hapless air-navigator, plunging, amid torn para- 
chutes, sandbags, and confused wreck, fast enough, 
into the jaws of the Devil! Suffice it to know that 
Teufelsdrockh rose into the highest regions of the 
empyrean, by a natural, parabolic track, and returned 
thence in a quick, perpendicular one. For the rest, 
let any feeling reader, who has been unhappy enough 
to do the like, paint it out for himself; considering 
only that if he, for his perhaps comparatively insigni- 
ficant mistress, underwent such agonies and frenzies, 
what must Teufelsdrockh's have been, with a fire-heart, 
and for a nonpareil Blumine! We glance merely at 
the final scene :- — 

" One morning, he found his morning-star all 
dimmed and dusky-red ; the fair creature was silent, 
absent ; she seemed to have been weeping. Alas, no 
longer a morning-star, but a troublous, skyey portent, 
announcing that the Doomsday had dawned ! She 
said in a tremulous voice, they were to meet no 
more." The thunderstruck air-sailor is not wanting 
to himself in this dread hour ; but what avails it ? 
We omit the passionate expostulations, entreaties, 
indignations, since all was vain, and not even an 
explanation was conceded him ; and hasten to the 
catastrophe. " Farefell, then, madam! said he, not 
without sternness, for his stung pride helped him. 
She put her hand in his, she looked in his face, tears 
started to her eyes ; in wild audacity he clasped her 
to his bosom ; their lips were joined, their two souls, 



SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 155 

like two dewdrops, rushed into one, — for the first 
time, and for the last?" Thus was Teufelsdrockh 
made immortal by a kiss. And then? Why, then — 
" thick curtains of night rushed over his soul, as rose 
the immeasurable crash of doom ; and through the 
ruins, as of a shivered universe, was he falling, falling 
towards the abyss. 



CHAPTER VI, 

SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 

We have long felt that, with a man like our Profes- 
sor, matters must often be expected to take a course 
of their own ; that, in so multiplex, intricate a nature, 
there might be channels, both for admitting and emit- 
ting, such as the psychologist had seldom noted; in 
short, that, on no grand occasion and convulsion, neither 
in the joy-storm nor in the wo-storm, could you pre- 
dict his demeanour. 

To our less philosophical readers, for example, it is 
now clear that the so passionate Teufelsdrockh, pre- 
cipitated through " a shivered universe" in this extra- 
ordinary way, has only one of three things which 
he can next do : Establish himself in Bedlam ; begin 
writing Satanic poetry ; or blow out his brains. In 
the progress towards any of which consummations, 
do not such readers anticipate extravagance enough ; 
breast-beating, brow-beating (against walls), lion-bel- 
lowings of blasphemy and the like, stampings, smitings, 
breakages of furniture, if not arson itself? 



156 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Nowise so does Teufelsdrockh deport him. He 
quietly lifts his Pilgerstab (Pilgrim-staff), " old busi- 
ness being soon wound up;" and begins a perambu- 
lation and circumambulation of the terraqueous globe ! 
Curious it is, indeed, how, with such vivacity of con- 
ception, such intensity of feeling, above all, with 
these unconscionable habits of exaggeration in speech, 
he combines that wonderful stillness of his, that 
stoicism in external procedure. Thus, if his sudden 
bereavement, in this matter of the flower-goddess, is 
talked of as a real Dooms-day and dissolution of 
nature, in which light, doubtless, it partly appeared to 
himself, his own nature is nowise dissolved thereby ; 
but rather is compressed closer. For once, as we 
might say, a Blumine by magic appliances has un- 
locked that shut heart of his, and its hidden things 
rush out tumultuous, boundless, like genii enfranchised 
from their glass phial ; but no sooner are your magic 
appliances withdrawn, than the strange casket of a 
heart springs to again ; and perhaps there is now no 
key extant that will open it; for a Teufelsdrockh, as 
we remarked, will not love a second time. Singular 
Diogenes ! No sooner has that heart-rending occur- 
rence fairly taken place, than he affects to regard it 
as a thing natural, of which there is nothing more to 
be said. " One highest hope, seemingly legible in 
the eyes of an angel, had recalled him as out of death' 
shadows into celestial life ; but a gleam of Tophet 
passed over the face of his angel ; he was rapt away 
in whirlwinds, and heard the laughter of demons. It 
was a calenture," adds he, " whereby the youth saw 
green Paradise-groves in the waste ocean-waters ; 
a lying vision, yet not wholly a lie, for he saw it." 



SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 157 

But what things soever passed in him, when he ceased 
to see it ; what ragings and despairings soever 
Teufelsdrockh's soul was the scene of, he has the 
goodness to conceal until a quite opaque cover of 
silence. We know it well; the first mad paroxysm 
past our brave Gneschen collected his dismembered 
philosophies, and buttoned himself together ; he was 
meek, silent, or spoke of the weather, and the jour- 
nals ; only by a transient knitting of those shaggy 
brows, by some deep flash of those eyes, glancing one 
knew not whither with tear-dew or with fierce fire,— - 
might you have guessed what a Gehenna was within ; 
that a whole Satanic school were spouting, though 
inaudibly, there. To consume your own choler, as 
some chimnies consume their own smoke ; to keep a 
whole Satanic school spouting, if it must spout, inau- 
dibly, is a negative yet no slight virtue, nor one of the 
commonest in these times. 

Nevertheless, we will not take upon us to say, that, 
in the strange measure he fell upon, there was not a 
touch of latent insanity ; whereof, indeed, the actual 
condition of these documents in Capricornus and 
Aquarius is no bad emblem. His so unlimited 
wanderings, toilsome enough, are without assigned or 
perhaps assignable aim; internal unrest seems his sole 
guidance ; he wanders, wanders, as if that curse of 
the Prophet had fallen on him, and he were " made 
like unto a wheel." Doubtless, too, the chaotic na- 
ture of these paper-bags aggravates our obscurity. 
Quite without note of preparation, for example, we 
come upon the following slip : "A peculiar feeling is 
it that will rise in the traveller, when turning some 
hill-range in his desert road, he descries, lying far 

14 



158 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

below embosomed among its groves and green natural 
bulwarks, and all diminished to a toybox, the- fair 
town where so many souls, as it were seen and yet 
unseen, are driving their multifarious traffic. Its white 
steeple is then truly a starward-pointing finger; the 
canopy of blue smoke seems like a sort of life-breath ; 
for always, of its own unity, the soul gives unity to 
whatso it looks on with love ; thus does the little 
dwelling-place of men, in itself a congeries of houses 
and huts, become for us an individual, almost a per- 
son. But what thousand other thoughts unite thereto, 
if the place has to ourselves been the arena of joyous 
or mournful experiences ; if, perhaps, the cradle we 
were rocked in still stands there, if our loving ones 
still dwell there, if our buried ones there slumber ! " 
Does Teufelsdrb'ckh,' — as the wounded eagle is said to 
make for its own eyrie, and indeed military deserters, 
and all hunted outcast creatures, turn as if by instinct 
in the direction of their birthland, — fly first, in this 
extremity, towards his native Entepfuhl; but reflecting 
that there no help awaits him, take but one wistful look 
from the distance, and then wend elsewhither ? 

Little happier seems to be his next flight ; into the 
wilds of nature ; as if in her mother-bosom he would 
seek healing. So, at least, we incline to interpret the 
following notice, separated from the former by some 
considerable space, wherein, however, is nothing note- 
worthy : — 

" Mountains were not new to him ; but rarely are 
mountains seen in such combined majesty and grace 
as here. The rocks are of that sort called primitive 
by the mineralogists, which always arrange themselves 
in masses of a rugged, gigantic character; which 



SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 159 

ruggedness, however, is here tempered by a singular 
airiness of form, and softness of environment ; in a 
climate favorable to vegetation, the gray cliff, itself 
eovered with lichens, shoots up through a garment of 
foliage or verdure ; and white, bright cottages, tree- 
shaded, cluster round the everlasting granite. In-fine 
vicissitude, beauty alternates with grandeur; you ride 
through stony hollows, along strait passes, traversed 
by torrents, oyerhung by high walls of rock; now 
winding amid broken, shaggy chasms and huge frag- 
ments ; now suddenly emerging into some emerald 
valley, where the streamlet collects itself into a lake, 
and man has again found a fair dwelling, and it seems 
as if peace had established herself in the bosom of 
strength. 

** To peace, however, in this vortex of existence, 
can the son of time not pretend ; still less if some 
spectre haunt him from the past ; and the future is 
wholly a Stygian darkness, spectre-bearing. Reason- 
ably might the Wanderer exclaim to himself: 'Are 
not the gates of this world's happiness inexorably shut 
against thee ; hast thou a hope that is not mad V Never- 
theless, one may still murmur audibly, or in the original 
Greek, if that suit better, ' Whoso can look on death 
will start at shadows V 

" From such meditations is the Wanderer's atten- 
tion called outwards ; for now the valley closes in ab- 
ruptly, intersected by a huge mountain-mass, the stony, 
water-worn ascent of which is not to be accomplished 
on horseback. Arrived aloft, he finds himself again 
lifted into the evening, sunset light ; and cannot but 
pause, and gaze round him, some moments there. An 
upland, irregular expanse of world, where valleys in 



160 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

complex branchings are suddenly or slowly arranging 
their descent towards every quarter of the sky. The 
mountain-ranges are beneath your feet, and folded 
together ; only the loftier summits look down here and 
there as on a second plain ; lakes also lie clear and 
earnest in their solitude. No trace of man now visi- 
ble ; unless, indeed, it were he who fashioned that little, 
visible link of highway, here, as would seem, scaling 
the inaccessible to unite province with province. But 
sunwards, lo you ! how it towers sheer up, a world of 
mountains, the diadem and centre of the mountain- 
region ! A hundred and a hundred savage peaks, in 
the last light of day ; all glowing of gold and ame- 
thyst, like giant spirits of the wilderness ; there in 
their silence, in their solitude, even as on the night 
when Noah's deluge first dried! Beautiful, nay, 
solemn, was the sudden aspect to our Wanderer. He 
gazed over those stupendous masses with wonder, 
almost with longing desire ; never till this hour had 
he known Nature, that she was one, that she was his 
mother, and divine. And as the ruddy glow was 
fading into clearness in the sky, and the sun had now 
departed, a murmur of eternity and immensity, of death 
and of life, stole through his soul ; and he felt as 
if death and life weie one, as if the earth were not 
dead, as if the spirit of the earth had its throne in 
that splendor, and his own spirit were therewith hold- 
ing communion. 

" The spell was broken by a sound of carriage- 
wheels. Emerging from the hidden Northward, to 
sink soon into the hidden Southward, came a gay 
barouche-and-four. It was open. Servants and postil- 
ions wore wedding-favors. That happy pair, ttyfcn, had 



SORROWS OF TJEUFELSDROCKH. 161 

found each other; it was their marriage evening ! Few 
moments brought them near. Du Himmel! It was 

Herr Towgood and Blumine ! With slight, un- 

recognising salutation they passed me ; plunged down 
amid the neighbouring thickets, onwards, to heaven, 
and to England ; and I, in my friend Richter's words, 
I remained alone, behind them, with the night.'''' 

Were it not cruel in these circumstances, here might 
be the place to insert an observation, gleaned long ago 
from the great Clothes-Volume, where it stands with 
quite other intent : " Some time before small-pox was 
extirpated," says the Professor, " there came a new 
malady of the spiritual sort on Europe ; I mean the 
epidemic, now endemical, of view-hunting. Poets of 
old date, being privileged with senses, had also enjoyed 
external nature ; but chiefly as we enjoy the crystal 
cup which holds good or bad liquor for us ; that is to 
say, in silence, or with slight incidental commentary. 
Never, as I compute, till after the Sorrows of Werter, 
was there man found who would say : Come, let us 
make a description ! Having drunk the liquor, come, 
let us eat the glass ! Of which endemic the Jenner is 
unhappily still to seek." Too true ! 

We reckon it more important to remark that the 
Professor's wanderings, so far as his stoical and cyni- 
cal envelopment admits us to clear insight, here first 
take their permanent character, fatuous or not. That 
basilisk glance of the barouche-and-four seems to have 
withered up what little remnant of a purpose may 
have still lurked in him. Life has become wholly a 
dark labyrinth ; wherein, through long years* our friend, 
flying from spectres, must stumble about at random, 
and naturally with more haste than progress. 

14* 



162 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Foolish were it in us to attempt following him, even 
from afar, in this extraordinary world-pilgrimage of 
his ; the simplest record of which, were clear record 
possible, would fill volumes. Hopeless is the obscu- 
rity, unspeakable the confusion. He glides from coun- 
try to country, from condition to condition ; vanishing 
and reappearing, no man can calculate how or where. 
Through all quarters of the world he wanders, and 
apparently through all circles of society. If in any 
scene, perhaps difficult to fix geographically, he settles 
for a time, and forms connexions, be sure he will snap 
them abruptly asunder. Let him sink out of sight, as 
private scholar (Privatisirender'), living, by the grace 
of God, in some European capital, you may next find 
him as Hadjee in the neighbourhood of Mecca. It is 
an inexplicable phantasmagoria, capricious, quick- 
changing ; as if our traveller, instead of limbs and 
highways, had transported himself by some wishing- 
carpet, or Fortunatus's hat. The whole, too, imparted 
emblematically, in dim, multifarious tokens (as that 
collection of Street-Advertisements) ; with only some 
touch of direct, historical notice sparingly interspersed ; 
little light-islets in the world of haze ! So that from 
this point, the Professor is more of an enigma than 
ever. In figurative language, we might say he be- 
comes, not indeed a spirit, yet spiritualized, vaporized. 
Fact unparalleled in biography ! The river of his 
history, which we have traced from its tiniest foun- 
tains, and hoped to see flow onward, with increasing 
current, into the ocean, here dashes itself over that 
terrific lover's leap ; and, as a mad-foaming cataract, 
flies wholly into tumultuous clouds of spray ! Low 
down it indeed collects again into pools and plashes ; 



SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 163 

yet only at a great distance, and with difficulty, if at 
all, into a general stream. To cast a glance into 
certain of these pools and plashes, and trace whither 
they run, must, for a chapter or two, form the limit 
of our endeavour. 

For which end, doubtless, those direct, historical 
notices, where they can be met with, are the best. 
Nevertheless, of this sort, too, there occurs much, 
which, with our present light, it were questionable to 
emit. Teufelsdrockh, vibrating everywhere between 
the highest and the lowest levels, comes in contact 
with public history itself. For example, these conver- 
sions and relations with illustrious persons, as Sultan 
Mai:moud, the Emperor Napoleon, and others, are 
they not as yet rather of a diplomatic character, than 
of a biographic ? The Editor, appreciating the sacred- 
ness of crowned heads, nay, perhaps suspecting the 
possible trickeries of a Clothes-Philosopher, will 
eschew this province for the present; a new time may 
bring new insight and a different duty. 

If we ask now, not indeed with what ulterior pur- 
pose, for there was none, yet with what immediate 
outlooks ; at all events, in what mood of mind, the 
Professor undertook and prosecuted this world-pilgrim- 
age, — the answer is more distinct and favourable. 
" A nameless unrest," says he, "urged me forward; 
to which the outward motion was some momentary, 
lying solace. Whither should I go 1 My loadstars 
were blotted out ; in that canopy of grim fire shone 
no star. Yet forward must I ; the ground burnt 
under me ; there was no rest for the sole of my foot. 
I was alone ! alone ! Ever, too, the strong inward 
longing shaped fantasms for itself; towards these, one 



164 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

after the other, must I fruitlessly wander. A feeling 
I had that, for ray fever-thirst, there was and must be 
somewhere a healing fountain. To many fondly ima- 
gined fountains, the Saints' Wells of these days, did 
I pilgrim ; to great men, to great cities, to great 
events ; but found there no healing. In strange coun- 
tries, as in the well-known ; in savage deserts, as in 
the press of corrupt civilization, it was ever the same ; 
how could your Wanderer escape from — his own sha- 
dow ? Nevertheless, still forward ! I felt as if in great 
haste ; to do I saw not what. From the depths of 
my own heart it called to me, Forwards ! The winds 
and the streams and all nature sounded to me, For- 
wards ! Ach Gott ! I was even once for all, a son of 
time." 

From which is it not clear that the internal Satanic 
school was still active enough ? He says elsewhere ; 
" The Enchiridion of Epictetus I had ever with me, 
often as my sole, rational companion ; and regret to 
mention that the nourishment it yielded was trifling." 
Thou foolish Teufelsdroekh ! How could it else ? 
Hadst thou not Greek enough to understand thus 
much : The end of man is an action, and not a thought, 
though it were the noblest ? 

"How I lived?" writes he once: "Friend, hast 
thou considered the 'rugged, all-nourishing Earth,' as 
Sophocles well names her ; how she feeds the sparrow 
on the housetop, much more her darling man? While 
thou stirrest and livest, thou hast a probability of 
victual. My breakfast of tea has been cooked by 
a Tartar woman, with water of the Amur, who wiped 
her earthen kettle with a horse-tail. I have roasted 
wild eggs in the sands of Sahara ; I have awakened 



SORROWS OF TEUFELSDROCKH. 165 

in Paris Estrapades and Vienna Malzleins, with no 
prospect of breakfast beyond elemental liquid. That 
I had my living to seek saved me from dying, — by 
suicide. In our busy Europe, is there not an ever- 
lasting demand for intellect, in the chemical, mechani- 
cal, political, religious, educational, commercial de- 
partments ? In Pagan countries, cannot one write 
Fetishes ? Living ! Little knowest thou what alchemy 
is in inventive soul ; how, as with its little finger, 
it can create provision enough for the body (of a 
philosopher) ; and then, as with both hands, create 
quite other than provision ; namely, spectres to tor- 
ment itself withal." 

Poor Teufelsdrockh ! Flying with hunger always 
parallel to him ; and a whole infernal chase in his 
rear; so that the countenance of hunger is compara- 
tively a friend's ! Thus must he, in the temper of 
ancient Cain, or of the modern Wandering Jew, 
save only that he feels himself not guilty and but 
suffering the pains of guilt, — wend to and fro with 
aimless speed. Thus must he, over the whole surface 
of the earth (by foot-prints), write his Sorrows of 
Teufelsdrockh ; even as the great Goethe, in passion- 
ate words, must write his Sorrows of Werter, before 
the spirit freed herself, and he could become a man. 
Vain, truly, is the hope of your swiftest runner " to 
escape from his own shadow!" Nevertheless, in 
these sick days, when the Born of heaven first descries 
himself (about the age of twenty) in a world such as 
ours, richer than usual in two things; in truths grown 
obsolete, and trades grown obsolete, — what can the 
fool think, but that it is all a den of lies, wherein who- 
so will not speak lies and act lies must stand idle and 



166 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

despair? Whereby it happens that, for your nobler 
minds, the publishing of some such work of art, in 
one or the other dialect, becomes almost a necessity. 
For what is it properly but an altercation with the 
Devil, before you begin honestly fighting him ? Your 
Byron publishes his Sorrows of Lord George, in verse 
and in prose, and copiously otherwise ; your Bonaparte 
represents his Sorrows of Napoleon opera in an ail-too 
stupendous style, with music of cannon-vollies, and 
murder-shrieks of a world ; his stage-lights are the 
fires of conflagration ; his rhyme and recitative are the 
tramp of embattled hosts and the sound of falling cities. 
— Happier is he who, like our Clothes-Philosopher, 
can write such matter, since it must be written on the 
insensible earth, with his shoe-soles only ; and also 
survive the writing thereof I 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE EVERLASTING NO. 

Under the strange nebulous envelopment, wherein 
our Professor has now shrouded himself, no doubt but 
his spritual nature is nevertheless progressive, and 
growing : for how can the " son of time," in any case, 
stand still? We behold him, through those dim years, 
in a state of crisis, of transition; his new pilgrim- 
ings, and general solution into aimless discontinuity, 
what is all this but a mad fermentation ; wherefrom 
the fiercer it is, the clearer product will one day evolve 
itself? 



THE EVERLASTING NO. 16t 

Such transitions are ever full of pain. Thus the 
eagle, when he moults, is sickly ; and, to attain his 
new beak, must harshly dash off the old one upon 
rocks. What stoicism soever our Wanderer in his 
individual acts and motions may affect, it is clear that 
there is a hot fever of anarchy and misery raging 
within ; coruscations of which flash out ; as, indeed, 
how could there be other? Have we not seen him dis- 
appointed, bemocked of Destiny, through long years ? 
All that the young heart might desire and pray for has 
been denied; nay, as in the last, worst instance, of- 
fered and then snatched away. Ever an " excellent 
passivity;" but of useful, reasonable activity, essential 
to the former as food to hunger, nothing granted ; till 
at length, in this wild pilgrimage, he must forcibly 
seize for himself an activity, though useless, unreason- 
able. Alas ! his cup of bitterness, which had been 
filling drop by drop, ever since that first " ruddy morn- 
ing" in the Hinterschlag Gymnasium, was at the very 
lip ; and then with that poison-drop, of the Towgood- 
and-Blumine business, it runs over, and even hisses 
over in a deluge of foam. 

He himself says once, with more justness than 
originality: " Man is, properly speaking, based upon 
hope ; he has no other possession but hope ; this world 
of his is emphatically the place of hope." What, 
then, was our Professor's possession 1 We see him, 
for the present, quite shut out from hope ; looking not 
into the golden orient, but vaguely all round into a 
dim, copper firmament, pregnant with earthquake and 
tornado. 

Alas, shut out from hope, in a deeper sense than 
we yet dream of! For as he wanders wearisomely 



168 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

through this world, he has now lost all tidings of 
another and higher. Full of religion, or at least of 
religiosity, as our friend has since exhibited himself, 
he hides not that, in those days, he was wholly irre- 
ligious : "Doubt had. darkened into unbelief," says 
he ; " shade after shade goes grimly over your soul, 
till you have the fixed, starless, Tartarean black." 
To such readers as have reflected, what can be called 
reflecting, on man's life, and happily discovered, in 
contradiction to much profit-and-loss philosophy, spec* 
ulative and practical, that soul is not synonymous 
with stomach; who understand, therefore, in our 
friend's words, " that, for man's well-being, faith is 
properly the one thing needful ; how, with it, martyrs, 
otherwise weak, can cheerfully endure the shame and 
the cross ; and, without it, worldlings puke up their 
sick existence, by suicide, in the midst of luxury ;" 
to such it will be clear that, for a pure moral nature, 
the loss of his religious belief was the loss of every 
thing. Unhappy young man 1 All wounds, the crush 
of long-continued destitution, the stab of false friend- 
ship, and of false love, all wounds in thy so genial 
heart would have healed again, had not its life-warmth 
been withdrawn. Well might he exclaim, in his wild 
way: " Is there no God, then; but, at best, an ab- 
sentee God, sitting idle, ever since the first Sabbath, 
at the outside of his universe, and seeing it go ? Has 
the word Duty no meaning? Is what we call Duty no 
divine messenger and guide ; but a false, earthly fan- 
tasm, made up of desire and fear, of emanations from 
the gallows and from Doctor Graham's celestial-bed ? 
Happiness of an approving concience ! Did not Paul 
of Tarsus, whom admiring men have since named 



THE EVERLASTING NO. 169 

Saint, feel that he was ' the chief of sinners ;' and 
Nero of Rome, jocund in spirit {Wohlgemuth), spend 
much of his time in fiddling ? Foolish word-monger, 
and motive grinder, that in thy logic-mill hast an 
earthly mechanism, for the Godlike itself, and wouldst 
fain grind me out virtue from the husks of pleasure* 
— I tell thee, nay ! To the unregenerate Prometheus 
Vinctus of a man, it is even the bitterest aggravation 
of his wretchedness that he is conscious of virtue, 
that he feels himself the victim, not of suffering only* 
but of injustice. What then ? Is the heroic inspira* 
tion we name virtue but some passion, some bubble 
of the blood, bubbling in the direction others profit 
by? I know not; only this I know, If what thou 
namest happiness be our true aim, then are we all 
astray. With stupidity and sound digestion man may 
front much. But what, in these dull, unimaginative 
days, are the terrors of conscience, to the diseases of 
the liver ? Not on morality, but on cookery, let us 
build our strong hold ; there brandishing our frying-pan, 
as censer, let us offer sweet incense to the Devil, and 
live at ease on the fat things which he has provided for 
his elect!" 

Thus must the bewildered Wanderer stand, as so 
many have done, shouting question after question into 
the Sibyl-cave of Destiny, and receive no answer but 
an echo. It is all a grim desert, this once fair world 
of his ; wherein is heard only the howling of wild 
beasts, or the shrieks of despairing, hate-filled men ; 
and no pillar of cloud by day, and no pillar of fire 
by night, any longer guides the pilgrim. To such 
length has the spirit of inquiry carried him. "But 
what recks it (was thuts)V cries he; " it is but the 

15 



170 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

common lot in this era. Not having come to spiritual 
majority prior to the Siecle de Louis Quinze, and not 
being born purely a loghead (Dummkopf), thou hadst 
no other outlook. The whole world is, like thee, sold 
to unbelief; their old temples of the Godhead, which 
for long have not been rain -proof, crumble down ; and 
men ask now : Where is the Godhead ? our eyes never 
saw him !" 

Pitiful enough were it, for all these wild utterances, 
to call our Diogenes wicked. Unprofitable servants 
as we all are, perhaps at no period of his life was he 
more decisively the servant of goodness, the servant of 
God, than even now when doubting God's existence. 
"One circumstance I note," says he; "after all the 
nameless wo that inquiry, which for me, what it is not 
always, was genuine lova of truth, had wrought me, I 
nevertheless still loved truth, and would bate no jot of 
my allegiance to her. ' Truth !' I cried, * though the 
heavens crush me for following her ; no falsehood ! 
though a whole, celestial Lubberland were the price of 
apostacy.' In conduct it was the same. Had a divine 
messenger from the clouds, or miraculous hand-writing 
on the wall, convincingly proclaimed to me, This 
shall thou do, with what passionate readiness, as I 
often thought, would I have done it, had it been leap- 
ing into the infernal fire ! Thus, in spite of all 
motive-grinders, and mechanical profit-and-loss phi- 
losophies, with the sick ophthalmia and hallucination 
they had brought on, was the infinite nature of duty 
still dimly present to me. Living without God in the 
world, of God's light I was not utterly bereft ; if my 
as yet sealed eyes, with their unspeakable longing, 
could nowhere see Him, nevertheless in my heart He 



THE EVERLASTING NO. 17 I 

was present, and His heaven-written law still stood 
legible and sacred there." 

Meanwhile, under all these tribulations, and tem- 
poral and spiritual destitutions, what must the Wan- 
derer, in his silent soul, have endured! "The 
painfullest feeling," writes he, "is that of your own 
feebleness (Unkraft); ever, as the English Milton 
says, to be weak is the true misery. And yet of your 
strength there is and can be no clear feeling, save by 
what you have prospered in, by what you have done. 
Between vague, wavering capability, and fixed, indu- 
bitable performance, what a difference ! A certain 
inarticulate self-consciousness dwells dimly in us ; 
which only our works can render articulate and de- 
cisively discernible. Our works are the mirror wherein 
the spirit first sees its natural lineaments. Hence, too, 
the folly of that impossible precept, Know thyself; till 
it be translated into this partially possible one, Know 
what thou canst work at. 

"-But for me, so strangely unprosperous had I been, 
the net result of my workings amounted as yet simply 
to — nothing. How, then, eould I believe in my 
strength, when there was as yet no mirror to see it in ? 
Ever did this agitating, yet, as I now perceive, quite 
frivolous question remain to me insoluble: Hast 
thou a certain faculty, a certain worth, such even as 
the most have not ; or art thou the completest dullard 
of these modern times? Alas! the fearful unbelief 
is unbelief in yourself. And how could I believe? 
Had not my first, last faith in myself, when even to 
me the heavens seemed laid open, and I dared to 
love, been all too cruelly belied? The speculative 
mystery of life grew even more mysterious to me ; 



172 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

neither in the practical mystery had I made the 
slightest progress, but been everywhere buffeted, 
foiled, and contemptuously cast out. A- feeble unit 
in the middle of a threatening infinitude, T seemed to 
have nothing given me but eyes, whereby to discern 
my own wretchedness. Invisible, yet impenetrable 
walls, as of enchantment, divided me from all living. 
Was there, in the wide world, any true bosom I could 
press trustfully to mine ? O heaven, no there was 
none ! I kept a lock upon my lips. Why should I 
speak much with that shifting variety of so-called 
friends, in whose withered, vain, and too-hungry souls, 
friendship was but an incredible tradition? In such 
cases, your resource is to talk little, and that little 
mostly from the newspapers. Now when I look back, 
it was a strange isolation I then lived in. The men 
and women round me, even speaking with me, were 
but figures ; I had, practically, forgotten that they 
were alive, that they were not merely automatic. In 
midst of their crowded streets and assemblages, I 
walked solitary ; and (except as it was my own heart, 
not another's, that I kept devouring) savage also as 
the tiger in his jungle. Some comfort it would have 
been, could I, like a Faust, have fancied myself 
tempted and tormented of the Devil ; for a hell, as I 
imagine, without life, though only diabolic life, were 
more frightful; but in our age of downpulling and 
disbelief, the very Devil has been pulled down, you 
cannot so much as believe in a Devil. To me the 
universe was all void of life, of purpose, of volition, 
even of hostility ; it was one huge, dead, immeasura- 
ble steam-engine, rolling on, in its dead indifference, 
to grind me limb from limb. O the vast, gloomy, 



THE EVERLASTING NO. 173 

solitary Golgotha, and mill of death ! Why was the 
living banished thither companionless, conscious ? 
Why, if there is no Devil; nay, unless the Devil is 
your God ?" 

A prey incessantly to such corrosions, might not, 
moreover, as the worst aggravation to them, the iron 
constitution even of a Teufelsdrockh threaten to fail ? 
We conjecture that he has known sickness ; and, in 
spite of his locomotive habits, perhaps sickness of the 
chronic sort. Hear this, for example. " How beau- 
tiful to die of broken-heart, on paper ! Quite another 
thing in practice ; every window of your feeling, even 
of your intellect, as it were, begrimed and mud- 
bespattered, so that no pure ray can enter; a whole 
drug-shop in your inwards ; the foredone soul drown- 
ing slowly in quagmires of disgust !" 

Putting all which external and internal miseries 
together, may we not find in the following sentences, 
quite in our Professor's still vein, significance enough ? 
"From suicide a certain after-shine (Nachschein) 
of Christianity withheld me ; perhaps also a certain 
indolence of character; for was not that a remedy I 
had at any time within reach ? Often, however, was 
there a question present to me : should some one 
now, at the turning of that corner, blow thee suddenly 
out of space, into the other world, or other no-world, 
by pistol-shot — how were it? On which ground, too, 
I have often, in sea-storms and sieged cities and other 
death-scenes, exhibited an impurturbability, which 
passed, falsely enough, for courage." 

"So had it lasted," concludes the Wanderer, "so 
had it lasted, as in bitter, protracted death-agony, 

15* 



174 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

through long years. The heart within me, unvis- 
ited by any heavenly dew-drop, was smouldering 
in sulphurous, slow-consuming tire. Almost since 
earliest memory I had shed no tear; or once only, 
when I, murmuring half-audibly, recited Faust's 
Deathsong, that wild Selig der den er im Siegesglanze 
findet (Happy whom he finds in battle's splendor), 
and thought that of this last friend even I was not 
forsaken, that destiny itself could not doom me not to 
die. Having no hope, neither had I any definite 
fear, were it of man or of devil; nay, I often felt as if 
it might be solacing, could the Arch-Devil himself, 
though in Tartarean terrors, but rise to me, that I 
might tell him a little of my mind. And yet, strangely 
enough, I lived in a continual, indefinite, pining fear; 
tremulous, pusillanimous, apprehensive of I knew not 
what ; it seemed as if all things in the heavens above 
and the earth beneath would hurt me; as if the hea- 
vens and the earth were but boundless jaws of a> 
devouring monster, wherein I, palpitating, waited to 
be devoured. 

"Full of such humor, and perhaps the miserablest 
man in the whole French capkal or suburbs, was I> 
one sultry dogday, after much perambulation, toiling 
along the dirty little Rue Saint Thomas d l'Enfer, 
among civic rubbish enough, in a close atmosphere, 
and over pavements hot as Nebuchadnezzar's furnace ; 
whereby, doubtless, my spirits were little cheered ; 
when, all at once, there rose a thought in me, and I 
asked myself: What art thou afraid of? Where- 
fore, like a coward, dost thou forever pip and 
whimper, and go cowering and trembling ! Despi- 
cable biped ! What is the sum-total of the worst that 



THE EVERLASTING NO. 175 

lies before thee ? Death ? Well, death ; and say the 
pangs of Tophet too, and all that the Devil and man 
may, will, or can do against thee ! Hast thou not a 
heart ; canst thou not suffer whatso it be ; and, as a 
child of freedom, though outcast, trample Tophet 
itself under thy feet, while it consumes thee ? Let it 
come, then ; I will meet it and defy it ! And as I so 
thought, there rushed like a stream of fire over my 
whole soul ; and I shook base fear away from me for- 
ever. I was strong of unknown strength; a spirit, 
almost a god. Ever from that time, the temper of my 
misery was changed ; not fear or whining sorrow was 
it, but indignation, and grim, fire-eyed defiance. 

" Thus had the Everlasting No (das Ewige Nein) 
pealed authoritatively through all the recesses of my 
being, of my Me ; and then was it that my whole Me 
stood up; in native, God-created majesty, and with em- 
phasis recorded its protest. Such a protest, the most 
important transaction in life, may that same indigna- 
tion and defiance, in a pyschological point of view, be 
fitly called. The Everlasting No has said : " Behold, 
thou art fatherless, outcast, and the universe is mine 
(the Devil's) ;' to which my whole Me now made 
answer : '/am not thine, but free, and forever hate 
thee !' 

"It is from this hour that I incline to date my 
spiritual new-birth, or Baphometic fir e^baptism ; per- 
haps I directly thereupon began to be a man." 



176 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

CHAPTER VIII. 

CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 

Though* after this " Baphometic fire-baptism" of 
his, our Wanderer signifies that his unrest was but 
increased, — as, indeed, "indignation and defiance," 
especially against things in general, are not the most 
peaceable inmates, — yet can the psychologist surmise 
that it was no longer a quite hopeless unrest ; that 
henceforth it had at least a fixed centre to revolve 
round. For the fire-baptized soul, long so scathed 
and thunder-riven, here feels its own freedom, which 
feeling is its Baphometic baptism ; the citadel of its 
whole kingdom it has thus gained by assault, and will 
keep inexpungable ; outwards from which the remain- 
ing dominions, not indeed without hard battling, will 
doubtless by degrees be conquered and pacificated. 
Under another figure we might say, if, in that great 
moment, in the Rue St. Thomas de V Enfer, the 
old inward Satanic school was not yet thrown out of 
doors, it received peremptory judicial notice to quit; — 
whereby, for the rest, its howl-chauntings, Ernulphus- 
cursings, and rebellious gnashings of teeth, might in 
the meanwhile, become only the most tumultuous, and 
difficult to keep secret. 

Accordingly, if we scrutinize these pilgrims well, 
there is perhaps discernable henceforth a certain in- 
cipient method in their madness. Not wholly as a 
spectre does Teufelsdrockh now storm through the 
world ; at worst, as a spectre-fighting man, nay, that 
will be done by a spectre queller. If pilgriming 
restlessly to so many " Saints' Wells," and ever with- 



CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 177 

out quenching of his thirst, he nevertheless finds little 
secular wells, whereby from time to time some alle- 
viation is ministered. In a word, he is now, if not 
ceasing, yet intermitting to " eat his own heart;" and 
clutches round him outwardly, on the Not-Me, for 
wholesomer food. Does not the following glimpse 
exhibit him in a much more natural state ? 

" Towns also and cities, especially the ancient, I 
failed not to look upon with interest. How beauti- 
ful to see thereby, as through a long vista, into the 
remote time ; to have, as it were, an actual section of 
almost the earliest past brought safe into the present, 
and set before your eyes ! There, in that old city 
was a live ember of culinary fire put down, say only 
two thousand years ago ; and there, burning more or 
less triumphantly, with such fuel as the region yielded, 
it has burnt, and still burns, and thou thyself seest 
the very smoke thereof. Ah ! and the far more mys- 
terious live ember of vital fire was then also put down 
there ; and still miraculously burns and spreads ; and 
the smoke and ashes thereof (in these judgment-halls 
and church-yards), and its bellows-engines (in these 
churches), thou still seest ; and its flame, looking out 
from every kind countenance, and every hateful one, 
still warms thee or scorches thee. 

" Of man's activity and attainment the chief results 
are aeriform, mystic, and preserved in tradition only; 
such are his foims of government, with the authority 
they rest on ; his customs, or fashions, both of cloth- 
habits and of soul-habits ; much more his collective 
stock of handicrafts, the whole faculty he has required 
of manipulating nature ; all these things as indispen- 
sable and priceless as they are, cannot in any way be 



1 78 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

fixed under lock and key, but must flit, spirit-like, on 
impalpable vehicles, from father to son ; if you de- 
mand sight of them, they are nowhere to be met 
with. Visible ploughmen and hammermen there have 
been, ever from Cain and Tubalcain downwards ; but 
where does your accumulated agricultural, metallur- 
gic, and other manufacturing Skill lie warehoused ? 
It transmits itself on the atmospheric air, on the sun's 
rays (by hearing and by vision) ; it is a thing aeriform^ 
impalpable, of quite spiritual sort. In like manner, 
ask me not, Where are the Laws ; where is the Gov- 
ernment ? In vain wilt thou go to Schonbrunn, to 
Downing street, to the Palais Bourbon ; thou findest 
nothing there, but brick or stone houses, and some 
bundles of papers tied with tape. Where, then, is that 
same cunningly-devised, almighty Government of 
theirs to be laid hands on? Everywhere, yet now- 
here. Seen only in its works, this too, is a thing 
aeriform, invisible ; or, if you will, mystic and miracu- 
lous. So spiritual (geistig) is our whole daily life ; all 
that we do springs out of mystery, spirit, invisible force; 
only like a little cloud-image, or Armida's palace, air- 
built, does the Actual body itself forth from the great 
mystic deep. 

" Visible and tangible products of the past, again, 
I reckon up to the extent of three : Cities, with their 
cabinets and arsenals ; their tilled fields, to either or 
to both of which divisions roads with their bridges 

may belong; and thirdly books. In which third, 

truly, the last invented, lies a worth far surpassing 
that of the two others. Wondrous indeed is the 
virtue of a true book ! Not like a dead city of stones, 
yearly crumbling, yearly needing repair ; more like a 



CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 179 

tilled field, but then a spiritual field ; like a spiritual 
tree, let me rather say, it stands from year to year, 
and from age to age (we have books that already 
number some hundred and fifty human age3) ; and 
yearly comes its new produce of leaves (commenta- 
ries, deductions, philosophical, political systems ; or 
were it only sermons, pamphlets, journalistic essays), 
every one of which is talismanic and thaumaturgic, 
for it can persuade men.. O thou who art able to 
write a book, which once in the two centuries or 
oftener there is a man gifted to do, envy not him 
whom they name city-builder, and inexpressibly pity 
him whom they name conqueror or city-burner ! 
Thou, too, art a conqueror and victor; but of the tiue 
sort, namely, over the Devil. Thou, too, hast built 
what will outlast all marble and metal, and be a wonder- 
bringing city of the mind, a temple and seminary and 
prophetic mount, whereto all kindreds of the earth 
will pilgrim. — Fool! why journeyest thou weari- 
somely, in thy antiquarian fervour, to gaze on the 
stone pyramids of Geeza, or the clay ones of Sacchara ? 
These stand there, as I can tell thee, idle and inert, 
looking over the desert, foolishly enough, for the last 
three thousand years ; but canst thou not open thy 
Hebrew Bible, then, or even Luther's version 
thereof?" 

No less satisfactory is his sudden appearance, not in 
battle, yet on some battle-field ; which, we soon gather, 
must be that of Wagram ; so that here, for once is a 
certain approximation to distinctness of date. Omit- 
ting much, let us impart what follows : 

" Horrible enough ! A whole Marchfeld strewed 
with shell-splinters, cannon-shot, ruined tumbrils, and 



180 SARTOR RESARTtfS. 

dead men and horses ; stragglers still remaining not 
so much as buried. And those red mould heaps : 
aye, there lie the shells <rf men, out of which all the 
life and virtue has been blown; and now are they 
swept together, and crammed down out of sight, like 
blown eggshells ! — Did Nature, when she bade the 
Donau bring down his mould-cargoes from the Carin- 
thian and Carpathian heights, and spread them out 
here into the softest, richest level,' — intend thee, O 
Marchfeld, for a corn-bearing nursery, whereon her 
children might be nursed; or for a cock-pit, wherein 
they might the more commodiously be throttled and 
tattered? Were thy three broad highways, meeting 
here from the ends of Europe, made for ammunition- 
wagons, then ? Were thy Wagrams and Stillfrieds 
but so many ready-built casemates, wherein the house 
of Hapsburg might batter with artillery, and with 
artillery be battered ? Konig Ottokar, amid yonder 
hillocks, dies under Rodolf 's truncheon ; here Kaiser 
Franz falls a-swoon under Napoleon's ; within which 
five centuries, to omit the others, how has thy breast, 
fair plain, been defaced and defiled ! The greensward 
is torn up and trampled down ; man's fond care of it, 
his fruit-tiees, hedgerows, and pleasant dwellings, 
blown away with gunpowder ; and the kind seedfield 
lies as a desolate, hideous Place-of-Sculls. — Never- 
theless, Nature is at work ; neither shall these povv- 
der-devilkins with their utmost devilry gainsay her ; 
but all that gore and carnage will be shrouded in, 
absorbed into manure ; and next year the Marchfeld 
will be green, nay, greener. Thrifty, unwearied Na- 
ture, ever out of our great waste educing some little 



CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 181 

profit of thy own, — how dost thou, from the very 
carcass of the killer, bring life for the living ! 

" What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the 
net purport and upshot of war ? To my own know- 
ledge, for example, there dwell and toil, in the British 
village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. 
From these, by certain * natural enemies' of the French, 
there are successively selected, during the French war, 
say thirty ablebodied men. Dumdrudge, at her own 
expense, has suckled and nursed them ; she has, not 
without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, 
and even trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, 
another build, another hammer, and the weakest can 
stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, 
amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected ; 
all dressed in red, and shipped away, at the public 
charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the 
south of Spain; and fed there till wanted. And now, 
to that same spot in the south of Spain, are thirty 
similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in 
like manner wending ; till at length, after infinite effort, 
the two parties come into actual juxta-position ; and 
thirty stands fronting thirty, each with a gun in his 
hand. Straightway the word ' Fire !' is given ; rnd 
they blow the souls out of one another ; and in place 
of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, the world has sixty 
dead carcasses, which it must buiy, and anew shed 
tears for. Had these men any quarrel ? Busy as the 
Devil is, not the smallest ! They lived far enough 
apart ; were the entirest strangers ; nay, in so wide a 
universe, there was even, unconsciously, by commerce, 
some mutual helpfulness between them. How then? 
Simpleton ! their governors had fallen out ; and, instead 
>■ 16 



182 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

of shooting one another, had the cunning- to make these 
poor blockheads shoot. — Alas, so it is in Deutschland, 
and hitherto in all other lands ; still, as of old, ' what 
devilry soever kings do, the Greeks must pay the 
piper !'— In that fiction of the English Smollett, it is 
true, the final cessation of war is perhaps prophetically 
shadowed forth; where the two natural enemies, in 
person take each a tobacco-pipe, filled with brimstone ; 
light the same, and smoke in one another's faces, till 
the weaker gives in. But from such predicted peace- 
era, what blood-filled trenches, and contentious centu- 
ries, may still divide us!" 

Thus can the Professor, at least in lucid intervals, 
look away from his own sorrows, over the many-colored 
world, and pertinently enough note what is passing 
there. We may remark, indeed, that for the matter 
of spiritual culture, if for nothing else, perhaps few 
periods of his life were richer than this. Internally, 
there is the most momentous, instructive course of 
practical philosophy, with experiments, going on ; to- 
wards the right comprehension of which his peripa- 
tetic habits, favourable to meditation, might help him 
rather than hinder. Externally, again, as he wanders 
to and fro, there are, if for the longing heart little sub- 
stance, yet for the seeing eye sights enough ; in these 
so boundless travels of his, granting that the Satanic 
school was even partially kept down, what an incredi- 
ble knowledge of our planet, and its inhabitants and 
their works, that is to say, of all knowable things, 
might not Teufelsdrockh acquire ! 

" I have read in most public libraries," says he, 
" including those of Constantinople and Samarcand ; 
inmost colleges, except the Chinese Mandarin ones, 



CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 183 

I have studied, or seen that there was no studying. 
Unknown languages have I oftenest gathered from 
their natural repertory, the air, by my organ of hear- 
ing; Statistics, Geographies, Topographies came, 
through the eye, almost of their own accord. The 
ways of man, how he seeks food and warmth and pro- 
tection for himself, in most regions, are ocularly known 
to me. Like the great Hadrian, I meted out much of 
the terraqueous globe with a pair of compasses that 
belonged to myself only. 

"Of great scenes, why speak? Three summer 
days, I lingered reflecting, and even composing (dich- 
tete), by the pine-chasms of Vaucluse; and in that 
clear lakelet moistened my bread. I have set under 
the palm-trees of Tadmor ; smoked a pipe among the 
ruins of Babylon. The great wall of China I have 
seen ; and can testify that it is of gray brick, coped 
and covered with granite, and shows only second-rate 
masonry. — Great events, also, have I not witnessed ? 
Kings sweated down (ausgemergelt) into Berlin-and- 
Milan customhouse-officers ; the world well won, and 
the world well lost ; oftener than once a hundred thou- 
sand individuals shot (by each other) in one day. All 
kindreds and peoples and nations dashed together, and 
shifted and shovelled into heaps, that they might fer- 
ment there, and in time unite. The birth-pangs of 
democracy, wherewith convulsed Europe was groan- 
ing in cries that reached heaven, could not escape me. 

" For great men I have ever had the warmest pre- 
dilection ; and can perhaps boast that few such in 
this era have wholly escaped me. Great men are the 
inspired (speaking and acting) texts of that divine 
Book of Revelations, whereof a chapter is comple- 



184 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

ted from epoch to epoch, and by some named His- 
tory ; to which inspired texts your numerous talented 
men, and your innumerable untalented men, are the 
better or worse exegetie commentaries, and wagon- 
load of too-stupid, heretical or orthodox, weekly ser- 
mons. For my study, the inspired texts themselves ! 
Thus, did I not, in very early days, having disguised 
me as tavern-waiter, stand behind the field-chairs, 
under that shady tree at Treisnitz by the Jena high- 
way ; waiting upon the great Schiller and greater 
Goethe ; and hearing what I have not forgotten 1 

For " 

But at this point the Editor recalls his prin- 



ciple of caution, some time ago laid down, and must 
suppress much. Let not the sacredness of laurelled, 
still more of crowned heads, be tampered with. Should 
we, at a future day, find circumstances altered, and 
the time come for publication, then may these glimp- 
ses into the privacy of the illustrious be conceded ; 
which for the present, were little better than treacher- 
ous, perhaps traitorous, eavesdroppings. Of Lord 
Byron, therefore, of Pope Pius, Emperor Tarakwang, 
and the " White Water-roses" (Chinese Carbonari), 
with their mysteries, no notice here ! Of Napolean 
himself we shall only, glancing from afar, remark 
that Teufelsdrockh's relation to him seems to have 
been of very varied character. At first we find our 
poor Professor on the point of being shot as a spy ; 
then taken into private conversation, even pinched on 
the ear, yet presented with no money ; at last indig- 
nantly dismissed, almost thrown out of doors, as an 
" Idelogist." " He himself," says the Professor, " was 
among the" completest Ideologists, at least Ideoprax- 



CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 185 

ists ; in the Idea (in der Idee) he lived, moved, and 
fought. The man was a divine missionary, though 
unconscious of it; and preached, through the can- 
non's throat, that great doctrine, La carriere ouverte 
aux talens (the tools to him that can handle them), 
which is our ultimate political Evangile, wherein alone 
can liberty lie. Madly enough he preached, it is true, 
as enthusiasts and first missionaries are wont, with 
imperfect utterance, amid much frothy rant ; yet as 
articulately perhaps as the case admitted. Or call 
him, if you will, an American Backwoodsman, who 
had to fell unpenetrated forests, and battle with innu- 
merable wolves, and did not entirely forbear strong 
liquor, rioting, and even theft ; whom, not withstand- 
ing, the peaceful sower will follow, and, as he cuts the 
boundless harvest, bless." 

More legitimate and decisively authentic is Teufels- 
drockh's appearance and emergence (we know not 
well whence) in the solitude of the North Cape, on 
that June midnight. He has a " light-blue Spanish 
cloak" hanging round him, as his " most commodious, 
principal, indeed sole upper-garment ;" and stands 
there, on the world-promontory, looking over the 
infinite brine, like a little, blue belfry (as we figure), 
now motionless, indeed, yet ready, if stirred, to ring' 
quaintest changes* 

" Silence as of death," writes he ; " for midnight, 
even in the Arctic latitudes, has its character ; nothing 
but the granite cliffs ruddy-tinged, the peaceable gurgle 
of that slow-heaving Polar ocean, over which in the 
utmost North the great sun hangs low and lazy, as if he, 
too, were slumbering. Yet is his cloud-couch wrought 
of crimson and cloth of gold ; yet 'does his light stream 

16* 



186 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

over the mirror of waters, like a tremulous fire pillar, 
shooting downwards to the abyss, and hide itself un- 
der my feet. In such moments, solitude also is in- 
valuable ; for who would speak, or be looked on, when 
behind him lies all Europe and Africa, fast asleep, 
except the watchmen ; and before him the silent im- 
mensity, and palace of the Eternal, whereof our sun 
is but a porch-lamp. 

" Nevertheless, in this solemn moment, comes a 
man or monster, scrambling from among the rock- 
hollows ; and, shaggy, huge as the Hyperborean bear, 
hails me in Russian speech ; most probably, therefore, 
a Russian smuggler. With courteous brevity, I sig- 
nify my indifference to contraband trade, my humane 
intentions, yet strong wish to be private. In vain ; 
the monster, counting doubtless on his superior stature, 
and minded to make sport for himself, or perhaps 
profit, were it with murder, continues to advance ; 
ever assailing me with his importunate, train-oil 
breath ; and now has advanced, till we stand both 
on the verge of the rock, the deep sea rippling gree- 
dily down below. What argument will avail ? On 
the thick Hyperborean, cherubic, reasoning, seraphic 
eloquence was lost. Prepared for such extremity, I, 
deftly enough, whisk aside one step ; draw out, from 
my interior reservoirs, a sufficient Birmingham horse- 
pistol, and say : ' Be so obliging as retire, friend (Er 
ziche sich zuriick, Freund), and with promptitude ! ' 
This logic even the Hyperborean understands ; fast 
enough, with apologetic, petitionary growl, he sidles 
off; and, except for suicidal, as well as homicidal pur- 
poses, need not return. 

" Such I hold to be the genuine use of gunpowder? 



CENTRE OF INDIFFERENCE. 187 

that it makes all men alike tall. Nay, if thou be cooler, 
cleverer than I, if thou have more mind, though all but 
no body whatever, then canst thou kill me first, and art 
the taller. Hereby, at least, is the Goliath powerless, 
and the David resistless ; savage animalism is nothing, 
inventive spiritualism is all. 

" With respect to duels, indeed, I have my own 
ideas. Few things, in this so surprising world, strike 
me with more surprise. Two little visual spectra of 
men, hovering with insecure enough cohesion in the 
midst of the Unfathomable, and to dissolve therein, 
at any rate, very soon, — make pause at the distance 
of twelve paces asunder ; whirl round ; and simulta- 
neously, by the cunningest mechanism, explode one 
another into dissolution ; and off-hand become air, 
and non-extant ! Deuce on it (yerdammty. the little 
spitfires ! — Nay, I think, with old Hugo von Trim- 
berg : ' God must needs laugh outright, could such 
a thing be, to see his wondrous mannikins here be- 
low.' " 

But amid these specialities, let us not forget the 
great generality, which is our chief quest here : How 
prospered the inner man of Teufelsdrockh under so 
much outward shifting ? Does Legion still lurk in 
him, though repressed; or has he exorcised that 
Devil's brood ? We can answer that the symptoms 
continue promising. Experience is the grand spir- 
itual doctor ; and with him Teufelsdrockh has now 
been long a patient, swallowing many a bitter bolus. 
Unless our poor friend belong to the numerous class of 
incurables, which seems not likely,, some cure will 
doubtless be effected. We should rather say that 



188 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Legion or the Satanic school, was now pretty well 
extirpated and cast out, but next to nothing introduced 
in its room ; whereby the heart remains, for the while, 
in a quiet, but no comfortable state. 

" At length, after so much roasting," thus writes 
our Autobiographer, " I was what you might name 
calcined. Pray only that it be not rather, as is the 
more frequent issue, reduced to a caput-mortuum I 
But in any case, by mere dint of practice, I had grown 
familiar with many things. Wretchedness was still 
wretched ; but I could now partly see through it, and 
despise it. Which highest mortal, in this inane exist- 
ence, had I not found a shadow-hunter or shadow- 
hunted ; and, when I looked through his brave garni- 
tures, miserable enough ? Thy wishes have all been 
sniffed aside, thought I; but what, had they even been 
all granted ! Did not the boy Alexander weep because 
he had not two planets to conquer ; or a whole solar 
system ; or, after that, a whole universe ? Ach Gott J 
when I gazed into these stars, have they not looked 
down on me, as if with pity, from their serene spaces; 
like eyes glistening with heavenly tears over the little 
lot of man? Thousands of human generations, all as 
noisy as our own, have been swallowed up of time, and 
there remains no wreck of them any more ; and Arc- 
turus and Orion and Sirius and the Pleiades are still 
shining in their courses, clear and young, as when the 
shepherd first noted them in the plain of Shinar. 
Pshaw ! what is this paltry, little dog-cage of an earth ; 
what art thou that sittest whining there ? Thou art 
still nothing, nobody ; True ; but who, then, is some- 
thing, somebody? For thee the family of man has no 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 189 

use ; it rejects thee ; thou art wholly as a dissevered, 
limb. So be it ; perhaps it is better so !" 

Too heavy-laden Teufelsdrockh ! Yet surely his 
bands are loosening ; one day he will hurl the burden 
far from him, and bound forth free, and with a second 
youth. 

" This," says our Professor, " was the Centre of 
Indifference I had now reached; through which 
whoso travels from the negative pole to the positive 
must necessarily pass.'* 



CHAPTER IX. 



the everlasting yea. 



" Temptations in the wilderness !" exclaims Teu- 
felsdrockh; "have we not all to be tried with such ? 
Not so easily can the old Adam, lodged in us by birth, 
be dispossessed. Our life is compassed round with 
necessity ; yet is the meaning of life itself no other 
than freedom, than voluntary force; thus have we a 
warfare ; in the beginning, especially, a hard-fought 
battle. For the God-given mandate, Work thou in 
well-doing, lies mysteriously written, in Promethean, 
prophetic characters, in our hearts ; and leaves us no 
rest night or day, till it be deciphered and obeyed; 
till it burn forth, in our conduct, a visible, acted gospel 
of freedom. And as the clay-given mandate, Eat thou 
and be filled, at the same time persuasively proclaims 
itself through every nerve, — must there not be a con- 



190 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

fusion, a contest, before the better influence can become 
the upper ? 

" To me nothing seems more natural than that the 
son of man, when such God-given mandate first pro- 
phetically stirs within him, and the clay must now be 
vanquished or vanquish, — should be carried of the 
spirit into grim solitudes, and there fronting the 
tempter do grimmest battle with him ; defiantly setting 
him at nought, till he yield and fly. Name it as we 
choose ; with or without visible Devil, whether in the 
natural desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous, 
moral desert of selfishness and baseness, — to such 
temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not ! 
Unhappy if we are but half menu in whom that divine 
handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in 
true sun-splendor ; but quivers dubiously amid meaner 
lights ; or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under 
earthly vapors ! — Our wilderness is the wide world 
in an atheistic century ; our forty days are long years 
of suffering and fasting ; nevertheless, to these also 
comes an end. Yes, to me also was given, if not 
victory, yet the consciousness of battle, and the re- 
solve to persevere therein while life or faculty is left. 
To me also, entangled in the enchanted forests, 
demon-peopled, doleful of sight and of sound, it was 
given, after weariest wanderings, to work out my way 
into the higher, sunlit slopes — of that mountain 
which has no summit, or whose summit is in heaven 
only!" 

He says elsewhere, under a less ambitious figure ; — 
as figures are, once for all, natural to him ; " Has not 
thy life been that of most sufficient men (tuchtigen 
Manner) thou hast known in this generation ? An 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 191 

outflush of foolish, young enthusiasm, like the first 
fallow-crop, wherein are as many weeds as valuable 
herbs ! This all parched away, under the droughts of 
practical and spiritual unbelief; as disappointment, in 
thought and act, often repeated, gave rise to doubt, 
and doubt gradually settled into denial ! If I have 
had a second crop, and now see the perennial green- 
sward, and sit under umbrageous cedars, which defy 
all drought (and doubt) ; herein, too, be the heavens 
praised, I am not without examples, and even exem- 
plars." 

So that for Teufelsdrockh also there has been a 
"glorious revolution;" these mad shadow-hunting 
and shadow-hunted pilgrimings of his were but some 
purifying " Temptation in the Wilderness," before 
his apostolic work (such as it was) could begin ; 
which temptation is now happily over, and the Devil 
once more worsted ! Was " that high moment in the 
Rue de VEnfer" then, properly the turning point of 
the battle ; when the fiend said, Worship me or be torn 
in shreds, and was answered valiantly with an Apage 
Satanas ? — Singular Teufelsdrockh, would thou 
hadst told thy singular story in plain words ! But it 
is fruitless to look there, in those paper-bags, for such. 
Nothing but inuendoes, figurative crotchets; a typi- 
cal shadow, fitfully wavering, prophetico-satiric ; no 
clear, logical picture. "How paint to the sensual 
eye," asks he once, "what passes in the holy-of-holies 
of man's soul ; in what words, known to these profane 
times, speak even afar off of the unspeakable?" We 
ask, in turn: Why perplex these times, profane as 
they are, with needless obscurity, by omission and by 
commission ? Not mystical only is our Professor, but 



192 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

whimsical ; and involves himself, now more than ever, 
in eye-bewildering chiaroscuro. Successive glimpses, 
here faithfully imparted, our more gifted readers must 
endeavour to combine for their own behoof. 

He says : " The hot Harmattan-wind had raged 
itself out ; its howl went silent within me ; and the 
long-deafened soul could now hear. I paused in my 
wild wanderings ; and sat me down to wait, and con- 
sider ; for it was as if the hour of change drew nigh. 
I seemed to surrender, to denounce utterly, and say : 
Fly, then, false shadows of hope ; I will chase you no 
more, I will believe you no more. And ye, too, hag- 
gard spectres of fear, I care not for you ; ye, too, are 
all shadows and a lie. Let me rest here ; for I am 
way-weary and life-weary ; I will rest here, were it 
but to die : to die or to live is alike to me ; alike insig- 
nificant." — And again : " Here, then, as I lay, in that 
Centre of Indifference ; cast, doubtless, by benig- 
nant upper influence, into a healing sleep, the heavy 
dreams rolled gradually away, and I awoke to a new 
heaven and a new earth. The first preliminary moral 
act, annihilation of self (Selbst-todtung), had been 
happily accomplished ; and my mind's eyes were now 
unsealed, and its hands ungyved." 

Might we not also conjecture that the following 
passage refers to his locality, during this same " heal- 
ing sleep ;" that his pilgrim-staff lies cast aside here, 
on " the high table-land ;" and, indeed, that the repose 
is already taking wholesome effect on him ; were it 
not that the tone, in some parts, has more of riancy, 
even of levity, than we could have expected ? How- 
ever, in Teufelsdrockh there is always the strangest 
dualism ; light dancing, with guitar-music, will be 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 193 

going on in the fore-court, while by fits from within 
comes the faint whimpering of wo and wail. We 
transcribe the piece entire : 

" Beautiful it was to sit there, as in my skyey tent, 
musing and meditating; on the high table-land, in 
front of the mountains ; over me, as roof, the azure 
dome ; and around me, for walls, four azure flowing 
curtains, — namely, of the four azure winds, on whose 
bottom-fringes also I have seen gilding. And then 
to fancy the fair castles that stood sheltered in these 
mountain hollows ; with their green flower-lawns, and 
white dames and damosels, lovely enough; or, better 
still, the straw-roofed cottages, wherein stood many a 
mother baking bread, with her children round her ; 
— all hidden and protectingly folded up in the valley- 
folds ; yet there and alive, as sure as if I beheld them. 
Or to see, as well as fancy, the nine towns and vil- 
lages, that lay round my mountain-seat, which, in still 
weather, were wont to speak to me (by their steeple- 
bells) with metal tongue ; and, in almost all weather, 
proclaimed their vitality by repeated smoke-clouds ; 
whereon, as on a culinary horologe, I might read the 
hour of the day. For it was the smoke of cookery, as 
kind housewives, at morning, midday, eventide, were 
boiling their husbands' kettles ; and ever a blue pillar 
rose up into the air, successively or simultaneously, 
from each of the nine, saying, as plainly as smoke 
could say : Such and such a meal is getting ready 
here. Not uninteresting! For you have the whole 
borough, with all its love-makings and scandal-monge- 
ries, contentions and contentments, as in miniature, and 
could cover it all with your hat. — If, in my wide way- 
farings, I had learned to look into the business of the 

17 



194 



SARTOR RESARTUS. 



world in its details, here perhaps was the place for com- 
bining it into general propositions, and deducing infer- 
ences therefrom. 

" Often also could I see the black tempest marching 
in anger through the distance ; round some Schreck- 
horn, as yet grim-blue, would the eddying vapor 
gather, and there tumultuously eddy, and flow down 
like a mad witch's hair; till, after a space, it vanished, 
and in the clear sunbeam your Schreckhorn stood 
smiling grim-white, for the vapor had held snow. How 
thou fermentest and elaboratest, in thy great fermenting- 
vat and laboratory of an atmosphere, of a world, O 
Nature! — Or what is Nature? Ha! why do I not 
name thee God ? Art thou not the 'Living Garment of 
God V O heavens, is it, in very deed, He, then, that 
ever speaks through thee ; that lives and loves in thee, 
that lives and loves in me ? 

" Foreshadows, call them rather fore-splendors, of 
that truth, and beginning of truths, fell mysteriously 
over my soul. Sweeter than dayspring to the ship- 
wrecked in Nova Zembla ; ah ! like the mother's 
voice to her little child, that strays bewildered, weep- 
ing in unknown tumults ; like soft streamings of 
celestial music to my too exasperated heart, came that. 
Evangile. The universe is not dead and demoniacal, 
a charnel-house with spectres ; but godlike, and my 
Father's ! 

" With other eyes, too, could I now look upon my 
fellow-man ; with an infinite love, an infinite pity. 
Poor, wandering, wayward man ! Art thou not tried, 
and beaten with stripes, even as I am ? Ever, whether 
thou bear the royal mantle or the beggar's gabardine, 
art thou not so weary, so heavy-laden ? And thy bed 
of rest is but a grave. O my brother, my brother ! why 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 195 

cannot I shelter thee in my bosom, and wipe away all 
tears from thy eyes ? — Truly, the din of many-voiced 
life, which, in this solitude, with the mind's organ, I 
could hear, was no longer a maddening discord, but a 
melting one ; like inarticulate cries, and sobbings of 
a dumb creature, which in the ear of Heaven are 
prayers. The poor earth, with her poor joys, was now 
my needy mother, not my cruel stepdame ; man, with 
his so mad wants and so mean endeavours, had become 
the dearer to me ; and even for his sufferings and his 
sins I now first named him Brother. Thus was I 
standing in the porch of that ' Sanctuary of Sorrow ;' 
by strange, steep ways, had I, too, been guided thither ; 
and ere long its sacred gates would open, and the ' Di- 
vine Depth of Sorrow'' lie disclosed to me." 

The Professor says, he here first got eye on the 
knot that had been strangling him, and straightway 
could unfasten it, and was free. " A vain intermina- 
ble controversy," writes he, " touching what is at 
present called Origin of Evil, or some such thing, 
arises in every soul, since the beginning of the world ; 
and in every soul, that would pass from idle suffering 
into actual endeavouring, must first be put an end to. 
The most, in our time, have to go content with a 
simple, incomplete enough suppression of this con- 
troversy ; to a few some solution of it is indispensable. 
In every new era, too, such solution comes out in 
different terms ; and ever the solution of the last era 
has become obsolete, and is found unserviceable. 
For it is man's nature to change his dialect from 
century to century ; he cannot help it though he 
would. The authentic Church- Catechism of our pres- 
ent century has not yet fallen into my hands ; mean- 



196 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

while, for my own private behoof, I attempt to eluci- 
date the matter so : Man's unhappiness, as I construe, 
comes of his greatness ; it is because there is an In- 
finite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot 
quite bury under the Finite. Will the whole finance- 
ministers and upholsterers and confectioners of modern 
Europe undertake, in joint-stock company, to make 
one shoeblack happy ? They cannot accomplish it 
above an hour or two ; for the shoeblack also has a 
soul quite other than his stomach ; and would require, 
if you consider it, for his permanent satisfaction and 
saturation, simply this allotment, no more, and no 
less : God's infinite universe altogether to himself, 
therein to enjoy infinitely, and fill every wish as fast 
as it rose. Oceans of Hochheimer, a throat like 
that of Ophiuchus ! speak not of them ; to the infi- 
nite shoeblack they are as nothing. No sooner is 
your ocean filled, than he grumbles that it might have 
been of better vintage. Try him with half of a uni- 
verse, of an omnipotence, he sets to quarrelling with 
the proprietor of the other half, and declares himself 
the most maltreated of men. — Always there is a black 
spot in our sunshine ; it is even, as I said, the shadow 
of ourselves. 

" But the whim we have of happiness is somewhat 
thus : By certain valuations, and averages, of our 
own striking, we come upon some sort of average 
terrestrial lot ; this we fancy belongs to us by nature, 
and of indefeasible right. It is simple payment of our 
wages, of our deserts ; requires neither thanks nor 
complaint ; only such overplus as there may be do we 
account happiness ; any deficit, again, is misery. Now 
consider that we have the valuation of our own de- 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 197 

serts ourselves, and what a fund of self-conceit there 
is in each of us, — do you wonder that the balance 
should so often dip the wrong way, and many a block- 
head cry : See there, what a payment ! was ever wor- 
thy gentleman so used ? — I tell thee, blockhead, it all 
comes of thy vanity ; of what thou fanciest those 
same deserts of thine to be. Fancy that thou deserv- 
est to be hanged (as is most likely), thou wilt feel it 
happiness to be only shot ; fancy that thou deservest 
to be hanged in a hair-halter, it will be a luxury to die 
in hemp. 

" So true is it, what I then said, that the fraction of 
life can be increased in value, not so much by increas- 
ing your numerator , as by lessening your denominator. 
Nay, unless my algebra deceive me, unity itself di- 
vided by zero will give infinity. Make thy claim of 
wages a zero, then ; thou hast the world under thy 
feet. Well did the wisest of our time write : ' It is 
only with renunciation {Entsageri) that life, properly 
speaking, can be said to begin.'" 

"I asked myself: What is this that, ever since 
earliest years, thou hast been fretting and fuming, and 
lamenting and self-tormenting, on account of? Say 
it in a word ; is it not because thou art not hafpy ? 
Because the Thou (sweet gentleman) is not sufficiently 
honored, nourished, soft-bedded, and lovingly cared 
for ? Foolish soul ! What Act of Legislature was 
there that thou shouldst be happy ? A little while ago 
thou hadst no right to be at all. What if thou wert 
born and predestined not to be happy, but to be un- 
happy ? Art thou nothing other than a vulture, then, 
that fliest through the universe, seeking after some- 
what to eat ; and shrieking dolefully because carrion 

17* 



198 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

enough is not given thee ? Close thy Byron ; open 
thy Goethe. 1 " 

"JSs leuchtet mir ein, I see a glimpse of it !" cries 
he elsewhere ; " there is in man a Higher than love 
of happiness ; he can do without happiness, and in- 
stead thereof find blessedness ! Was it not to preach 
forth this same Higher that sages and martyrs, the 
poet and the priest, in all times, have spoken and suf- 
fered ; bearing testimony, through life and through 
death, of the godlike that is in man, and how in the 
godlike only has he strength and freedom 1 Which 
God-inspired doctrine art thou too honored to be taught ; 
O heavens ! and broken with manifold merciful afflic- 
tions, even till thou become contrite, and learn it ! O 
thank thy destiny for these ; thankfully bear what yet 
remain ; thou hast need of them ; the self in thee 
needed to be annihilated. By benignant fever-parox- 
ysms is life rooting out the deep-seated chronic disease, 
and triumphs over death. On the roaring billows of 
time, thou art not engulfed, but born aloft into the 
azure of eternity. Love not pleasure ; love God. This 
is the Everlasting Yea, wherein all contradiction is 
solved ; wherein whoso walks and works, it is well 
with him." 

And again : " Small is it that thou canst trample 
the earth with its injuries under thy feet, as old Greek 
Zeno trained thee ; thou canst love the earth while it 
injures thee, and even because it injures thee; for 
this a Greater than Zeno was needed, and He, too, 
was sent. Knowest thou that * Worship of Sorrow ?' 
The temple thereof, opened some eighteen centuries 
ago, now lies in ruins, overgrown with jungle, the 
habitation of doleful creatures. Nevertheless, venture 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 199 

forward; in a low crypt, arched out of falling frag- 
ments, thou findest the altar still there, and its sacred 
lamp perennially burning." 

Without pretending to comment on which strange 
utterances, the Editor will only remark that there lies 
beside them much of a still more questionable char- 
acter ; unsuited to the general apprehension ; nay, 
wherein he himself does not see his way. Nebulous 
disquisitions on religion, yet not without bursts of 
splendor; on the "perennial continuance of inspira- 
tion ;" on prophecy ; that there are " true priests, as 
well as Baal-priests, in our own day ;" with more of 
the like sort. We select some fractions, by way of 
finish to this farrago. 

" Cease, my much-respected Herr von Voltaire," 
thus apostrophizes the Professor ; " shut thy sweet 
voice ; for the task appointed thee seems finished. 
Sufficiently hast thou demonstrated this proposition, 
considerable or otherwise : That the Mythus of the 
Christian religion looks not in the eighteenth century 
as it did in the eighth. Alas, were thy six-and-thirty 
quartos, and the six-and-thirty thousand other quartos 
and folios, and flying sheets or reams, printed before 
and since on the subject, all needed to convince us of 
so little ? But what next ? Wilt thou help us to 
embody the divine spirit of that religion in a new My- 
thus, in a new vehicle and vesture, that our souls, 
otherwise too like perishing, may live ? What ! thou 
hast no faculty in that kind ? Only a torch for burn- 
ing, no hammer for building ? Take our thanks, then, 
and thyself away. 

" Meanwhile what are antiquated Mythuses to me ? 
Or is the God present, felt in my own heart, a thing 



200 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

which Herr von Voltaire will dispute out of me ; or 
dispute into me ? To the « Worship of Sorrow 1 
ascribe what origin and genesis thou pleasest, has 
not that worship originated, and been generated ; is it 
not here ? Feel it in thy heart, and then say whether 
it is of God! This is belief; all else is opinion, — 
for which latter, whoso will, let him worry and be 
worried." 

" Neither," observes he elsewhere, " shall ye tear 
out one another's eyes, struggling over ' plenary in- 
spiration,' and such like ; try rather to get a little even 
partial inspiration, each of you for himself. One 
Bible I know, of whose plenary inspiration doubt is 
not so much as possible ; nay, with my own eyes I 
saw the God's-hand writing it ; thereof all other 
Bibles are but leaves, — say, in picture-writing to assist 
the weaker faculty." 

Or, to give the wearied reader relief, and bring it to 
an end, let him take the following perhaps more intel- 
ligible passage : 

" To me, in this our life," says the Professor, 
" which is an internecive warfare with the Time- 
spirit, other warfare seems questionable. Hast thou 
in any way a contention with thy brother, I advise 
thee, think well what the meaning thereof is. If thou 
gauge it to the bottom, it is simply this : ' Fellow, 
see ! thou art taking more than thy share of happiness 
in the world, something from my share ; which, by 
the heavens, thou shalt not ; nay, I will fight thee 
rather.' — Alas ! and the whole lot to be divided is 
such a beggarly matter ; truly a « feast of shells,' for 
the substance has been spilled out ; not enough to 
quench one appetite ; and the collective human species 



THE EVERLASTING YEA. 201 

clutching at them ! — Can we not, in all such cases, 
rather say : ' Take it, thou too-ravenous individual ; 
take that pitiful additional fraction of a share, which I 
reckoned mine, but which thou so wantest; take it 
with a blessing ; would to heaven I had enough for 
thee !' — If Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre be, ' to a cer- 
tain extent, Applied Christianity,' surely to a still 
greater extent, so is this. We have here not a Whole 
Duty of Man, yet a Half Duty, namely, the passive half; 
could we but do it, as we can demonstrate it ! 

** But, indeed, conviction, were it never so excellent, 
is worthless till it convert itself into conduct. Nay, 
properly, conviction is not possible till then, inasmuch 
as all speculation is by nature endless, formless, a 
vortex amid vortices ; only by a felt, indubitable cer- 
tainty of experience, does it find any centre to revolve 
round, and so fashion itself into a system. Most true 
is it, as a wise man teaches us, that ' doubt of any 
sort cannot be removed except by action.' On which 
ground, too, let him who gropes painfully in darkness 
or uncertain light, and prays vehemently that the 
dawn may ripen into day, lay this other precept well 
to heart, which to me was of invaluable service : ' Do 
the duty which lies nearest thee,' which thou knowest 
to be a duty ! Thy second duty will already have be- 
come clearer. 

" May we not say, however, that the hour of spirit- 
ual enfranchisement is even this : when your ideal 
world, wherein the whole man has been dimly strug- 
gling and inexpressibly languishing to work, becomes 
revealed, and thrown open ; and you discover, with 
amazement enough, like the Lothario in Wilhelm 
Meister, that your ' America is here or nowhere' ? 



202 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

The situation that has not its duty, its Ideal, was 
never yet occupied by man. Yes, here, in this poor, 
miserable, hampered, despicable Actual, wherein thou 
even now standest, here or nowhere is thy Ideal ; work 
it out therefrom ; and working, believe, live, be free. 
Fool ! the Ideal is in thyself, the impediment, too, is in 
thyself; thy condition is but the stuff thou art to shape 
that same Ideal out of; what matters whether such 
stuff be of this sort or of that, so the form thou give 
it be heroic, be poetic ? O thou, that pinest in the 
imprisonment of the Actual, and criest bitterly to the 
gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and create, know 
this of a truth : the thing thou seekest is already with 
thee, l here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see ! 

"But it is with man's soul as it was with nature; 
the beginning of creation is — light. Till the eye 
have vision, the whole members are in bonds. Divine 
moment, when over the tempest-tost soul, as once 
over the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken : ' Let there 
be light!' Ever to the greatest that has felt such 
moment, is it not miraculous and God-announcing ; 
even as, under simpler figures, to the simplest and 
least ? The mad primeval discord is hushed ; the 
rudely jumbled, conflicting elements bind themselves 
into separate firmaments ; deep, silent rock-founda- 
tions are built beneath ; and the skyey vault with 
its everlasting luminaries above ; instead of a dark, 
wasteful chaos, we have a blooming, fertile, heaven- 
encompassed world. 

" I, too, could now say to myself: Be no longer a 
chaos, but a world, or even worldkin. Produce ! Pro- 
duce ! Were it but the pitifullest, infinitesimal fraction 
of a product, produce it, in God's name ! 'T is the 



PAUSE. 203 

utmost thou hast in thee ; out with it, then. Up, up ! 
Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy 
whole might. Work while it is called to-day, for the 
night cometh wherein no man can work." 



CHAPTER X. 

PAUSE. 

Thus have we, as closely and perhaps satisfactorily 
as in such circumstances might be> followed Teufels- 
drockh through the various successive states and 
stages of growth, entanglement, unbelief, and almost 
reprobation, into a certain clearer state of what he 
himself seems to consider as Conversion. " Blame 
not the word," says he, "rejoice rather that such a 
word, signifying such a thing, has come to light in 
our modern era, though hidden from the wisest 
ancients. The old world knew nothing of Conver- 
sion ; instead of an Ecce Homo, they had only some 
Choice of Hercules. It was a new-attained progress 
in the moral development of man ; hereby has the 
highest come home to the bosoms of the most limited ; 
what 1o Plato was but a hallucination, and to Socrates 
a chimera, is now clear and certain to your Zinzen- 
dorfs, your Wesleys, and the poorest of their Pietists 
and Methodists." 

It is here, then, that the spiritual majority of Teufels- 
drockh commences ; we are henceforth to [see him 
" work in well-doing," with the spirit and clear aims 
of a man. He has discovered that the ideal workshop, 



204 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

he so panted for, is even this same actual, ill-furnished 
workshop he has so long been stumbling in. He can 
Say to himself: "Tools ? Thou hast no tools ? Why, 
there is not a man, or a thing, now alive, but has tools. 
The basest of created animalcules, the spider itself, has 
a spinning-jenny, and warping-mill, and power-loom, 
within its head ; the stupidest of oysters has a Papin's 
digester, with stone and-lime house to hold it in ; every 
being that can live can do something; this let him 
do. — Tools ? Hast thou not a brain, furnished, fur- 
nishable with some glimmerings of light; and three 
fingers to hold a pen withal ? Never, since Aaron's 
rod went out of practice, or even before it, was there 
such a wonder-working tool ; greater than all recorded 
miracles have been performed by pens. For strangely 
in this so solid-seeming world, which nevertheless is 
in continual, restless flux, it is appointed that sound, 
to appearance the most fleeting, should be the most 
continuing of all things. The Word is well said to 
be omnipotent in this world ; man, thereby divine, can 
create as by a Fiat. Awake, arise ! Speak forth 
what is in thee ; what God has given thee ; what the 
Devil shall not take away. Higher task than that of 
priesthood was allotted to no man ; wert thou but the 
meanest in that sacred hierarchy, is it not honor 
enough therein to spend and be spent ? 

" By this art, which whoso will may sacrilegiously 
degrade into a handicraft," adds Teufelsdrockh, "have 
I thenceforth abidden. Writings of mine, not, indeed, 
known as mine (for what am I?) 9 have fallen, perhaps 
not altogether void, into the mighty seedfield of opin- 
ion ; fruits of my unseen sowing gratifyingly meet me 
here and there. I thank the heavens that I have now 



PAUSE. 205 

found my calling ; wherein, with or without percepti- 
ble result, I am minded diligently to persevere. 

" Nay, how knowest thou," cries he, " but this and 
the other pregnant device, now grown to be a world- 
renowned, far-working institution ; like a grain of 
right mustard-seed once cast into the right soil, and 
now stretching out strong boughs to the four winds, 
for the birds of the air to lodge in, — may have been 
properly my doing ? Some one's doing it without 
doubt was ; from some idea in some single head it did 
first of all take beginning : why not from some idea 
in mine ?" Does Teufelsdrockh here glance at that 
" Society for the Conservation of Property 
(EigenthumS'ConservirendeGesellschaft)" of which so 
many ambiguous notices glide spectre-like through 
these inexpressible paper-bags ? " An institution," 
hints he, " not unsuitable to the wants of the time ; 
as, indeed, such sudden extension proves ; for already 
can the society number, among its office-bearers or 
corresponding members, the highest names, if not the 
highest persons, in Germany, England, France ; and 
contributions, both of money and of meditation, pour 
in from all quarters ; to, if possible, enlist the re- 
maining integrity of the world, and, defensively and 
with forethought, marshal it round this palladium." 
Does Teufelsdrockh mean, then, to give himself out 
as the originator of that so notable Eigenthums-con- 
servirende. (" Owndom-conserving") Gesellschaft ; 
and, if so, what, in the Devil's name, is it? He again 
hints : "At a time when the divine commandment, 
Thou shalt not steal, wherein, truly, if well understood, 
is comprised the whole Hebrew Decalogue, with 
Solon's and Lycurgus's Constitutions, Justinian's 

18 



206 SARTOR RESARTtfS, 

Pandects, the Code Napoleon, and all Codes, Cate- 
chisms, Divinities, Moralities whatsoever, that man 
hath hitherto devised (and enforced with altar-fire and 
gallows-ropes) for his social guidance : at a time, I 
say, when this divine commandment has all but faded 
away from the general remembrance ; and, with little 
disguise, a new, opposite commandment, Thou shalt 
steal, is every where promulgated, — it perhaps be- 
hoved, in this universal dotage and deliration, the 
sound portion of mankind to bestir themselves and 
rally. When the widest and wildest violations of that 
divine right of property, the only divine right now 
extant or conceivable, are sanctioned and recom- 
mended by a vicious press, and the world has lived to 
hear it asserted that we have no property in oar very 
bodies, but only an accidental possession, and life-rent, 
what is the issue to be looked for ? Hangmen and 
catchpoles may, by their noose-gins and baited fall- 
traps, keep down the smaller sort of vermin ; but 
what, except perhaps some such universal association, 
can protect us against the whole meat-devouring and 
man-devouring hosts of boa constrictors 1 If, there- 
fore, the most sequestered thinker have wondered, in 
his privacy, from what hand that perhaps not ill-written 
program in the public journals, with its high prize- 
questions and so liberal prizes, could have proceeded, 
— let him now cease such wonder; and, with undi- 
vided faculty, betake himself to the Concurrenz (Com- 
petition)." 

We ask : Has this same " perhaps not ill- written 
program," or any other authentic transaction of that 
Property-conserving Society, fallen under the eye of 
the British reader, in any journal, foreign or domestic? 



PAUSE. 207 

If so, what arc those prize-questions ; what are the 
terms of competition, and when, and where 1 No 
printed newspaper-leaf, no farther light of any sort, 
to be met with in these paper-bags ! Or is the whole 
business one other of those whimsicalities, and per- 
verse inexplieabilities, whereby Herr Teufelsdrockh, 
meaning much or nothing, is pleased so often to play 
fast and loose with us ? 

Here, indeed, at length, must the Editor give utter- 
ance to a painful suspicion, which, through late chap- 
ters, has begun to haunt him ; paralyzing any little 
enthusiasm that might still have rendered his thorny 
biographical task a labor of love. It is a suspicion 
grounded perhaps on trifles, yet confirmed almost into 
certainty by the more and more discernible humoris- 
tico-satirical tendency of Teufelsdrockh, in whom 
under-ground humors, and intricate, sardonic rogueries, 
wheel within wheel, defy all reckoning; a suspicion, 
in one word, that these autobiographical documents 
are partly a mystification ! What if many a so-called 
fact were little better than a fiction ; if here we had 
no direet camera-obscuia picture of the Professor's 
history ; but only some more or less fantastic adum- 
bration, symbolically, perhaps significally enough, 
shadowing forth the same ! Our theory begins to be 
that, in receiving as literally authentic what was but 
hieroglyphically so, Hofrath Heuschrecke, whom in 
that case we scruple not to name Hofrath Nose-of- 
Wax, was made a fool of, and set adrift to make fools 
of others. Could it be expected, indeed, that a man, 
so known for impenetrable reticence as Teufelsdrockh, 
would all at once frankly unlock his private citadel to 



208 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

an English Editor and a German Hofrath ; and not 
rather deceptively inlock both Editor and Hofrath, in 
the labyrinthic tortuosities and covered ways of said 
citadel (having enticed them thither), to see, in his 
half-devilish way, how the fools would look ? 

Of one fool, however, the%Herr Professor will per- 
haps find himself short. On a small slip, formerly 
thrown aside as blank, the ink being all but invisible, 
we lately notice, and with effort decipher, the follow- 
ing : " What are your historical facts ; still more your 
biographical ? Wilt thou know a man, above all, a 
mankind, by stringing together beadrolls of what thou 
namest facts ? The man is the spirit he worked in ; 
not what he did, but what he became. Facts are 
engraved Hierograms, for which the fewest have the 
key. And then how your blockhead (Dummkopf) 
studies not their meaning ; but simply whether they 
are well or ill cut, what he calls moral or immoral! 
Still worse is it with your bungler (Pfiischer) ; such 
I have seen reading some Rousseau, with pretences of 
interpretation ; and mistaking the ill-cut Serpent-of- 
Eternity for a common poisonous reptile." Was the 
Professor apprehensive, lest an Editor, selected as the 
present boasts himself, might mistake the Teufels- 
drockh Serpent of Eternity in like manner? For 
which reason it was to be altered, not without under- 
hand satire, into a plainer symbol ? Or is this merely 
one of his half-sophisms, half-truisms, which if he can 
but set on the back of a figure, he cares not whither 
it gallop ? We say not with certainty ; and indeed, so 
strange is the Professor, can never say. If our sus- 
picion be "wholly unfounded, let his own questionable 
ways, not our necessary circumspectness, bear the 
blame. 



PAUSE. 209 

But be this as it will, the somewhat exasperated 
and, indeed, exhausted Editor determines here to shut 
these paper-bags, for the present. Let it suffice that 
we know of Teufelsdrockh, so far, if " not what he 
did, yet what he became ;" the rather, as his charac- 
ter has now taken its ultimate bent, and no new revo- 
lution, of importance, is to be looked for. The 
imprisoned chrysalis is now a winged Psyche ; and 
such, wheresover by its flight, it will continue. To 
trace by what complex gyrations (flights or involun- 
tary waftings) through the mere external life-ele- 
ment, Teufelsdrockh reaches his university professor- 
ship, and the Psyche clothes herself in civic titles, 
without altering her now fixed nature, — would be 
comparatively an unproductive task ; were we even 
unsuspicious of its being, for us at least, a false and 
impossible one. His outward biography, therefore, 
which, at the Blumine Lover' s-Leap, we saw churned 
utterly into spray-vapor, may hover in that condition, 
for aught that concerns us here. Enough that by 
survey of certain " pools and plashes," we have as- 
certained its general direction. Do we not already 
know that, by one way and other, it has long since 
rained down again into a stream ; and even now, at 
Weissnichtwo, flows deep and still, fraught with the 
Philosophy of Clothes, and visible to whoso will cast 
eye thereon ? Over much invaluable matter that lies 
scattered, like jewels among quarry-rubbish, in those 
paper-catacombs, we may have occasion to glance 
back, and somewhat will demand insertion at the right 
place. Meanwhile, be our toilsome diggings therein 
suspended. 

If now, before reopening the great Clothes- Volume, 

18* 



210 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

we ask what our degree of progress, during these ten 
chapters, has been, towards right understanding of 
the Clothes-Philosophy , let not our discouragement 
become total. To speak in that old figure of the hell- 
gate bridge over chaos, a few flying pontoons have per- 
haps been added, though as yet they drift straggling 
on the flood ; how far they will reach, when once the 
chains are straightened and fastened, can, at present, 
only be matter of conjecture. 

So much we already calculate. Through many a 
little loophole we have had glimpses into the internal 
world of Teufelsdrockh ; his strange, mystic, almost 
magic diagram of the universe, and how it was gradu- 
ally drawn, is not hencefoith altogether dark to us. 
Those mysterious ideas on Time, which merit consid- 
eration, and are not wholly unintelligible with such, 
may by and by prove significant. Still more may his 
somewhat peculiar view of Nature ; the decisive One- 
ness he ascribes to Nature. How all Nature and Life 
are but one Garment, a "living garment," woven and 
ever a-weaving in the " Loom of Time." Is not here, 
indeed, the outline of a whole Clothes-Philosophy ; at 
least the arena it is to work in ? Remark, too, that the 
character of the man, nowise without meaning in such 
a matter, becomes less enigmatic. Amid so much 
tumultuous obscurity, almost like diluted madness, do 
not a certain indomitable defiance and yet a boundless 
reverence seem to loom forth, as the two mountain- 
summits on whose rock-strata all the rest were based 
and built ? 

Nay, farther, may we not say that Teufelsdrockh'a 
biography, allowing it even, as suspected, only a hiero- 
glyphical truth, exhibits a man, as it were pre'ap- 



PAUSE. 211 

pointed for Chothes-Philosophy ? To look through 
the shows of things into things themselves, he is led 
and compelled. The " passivity" given him by birth 
is fostered by all turns of his fortune. Everywhere 
cast out, like oil out of water, from mingling in any 
employment, in any public communion, he has no por- 
tion but solitude, and a life of meditation. The whole 
energy of his existence is directed, through long years, 
on one task : that of enduring pain, if he cannot cure 
it. Thus everywhere do the shows of things oppress 
him, withstand him, threaten him with fearfullest de- 
struction. Only by victoriously penetrating into things 
themselves can he find peace and a stronghold. But 
is not this same looking through the shows or vestures 
into the things even the first preliminary to a Philoso- 
phy of Clothes ? Do we not, in all this, discern some 
beckonings towards the true higher purport of such a 
philosophy ; and what shape it must assume with such 
a man, in such an era ? 

Perhaps in entering on Book Third, the courteous 
reader is not utterly without guess whither he is bound ; 
nor, let us hope, for all the fantastic dream-grottoes 
through which, as is our lot with Teufelsdrockh, he 
must wander, will there be wanting between whiles 
some twinkling of a polar star. 



21*2 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



BOOK III. 
CHAPTER I. 

INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. 

As a wonder-loving and wonder-seeking man, Teu- 
felsdrockh, from an early part of this Clothes-Volume, 
has more and more exhibited himself. Striking it 
was, amid all his perverse cloudiness, with what force 
of vision and of heart he pierced into the mystery of 
the world; recognising in the highest sensible phe- 
nomena, so far as sense went, only fresh or faded 
raiment ; yet ever, under this, a celestial essence there- 
by rendered visible ; and while, on the one hand, he 
trod the old rags of matter, with their tinsels, into the 
mire, he, on the other, everywhere exalted spirit above 
all earthly principalities and powers, and worshipped 
it, though under the meanest shapes, with a true Pla- 
tonic mysticism. What the man ultimately purposed 
by thus casting the Greek-fire into the general ward- 
robe of the universe ; what such more or less com- 
plete rending and burning of garments throughout the 
whole compass of civilized life and speculation should 
lead to ; the rather as he was no Adamite, in any 
sense, and could not, like Rousseau, recommend 
either bodily or intellectual nudity, and a return to 
the savage state; — all this our readers are now bent 
to discover ; this is, in fact, properly the gist and 
purport of Professor Teufelsdrockh's Philosophy of 
Clothes. 



INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. 213 

Be it remembered, however, that such purport is 
here not so much evolved as detected to lie ready for 
evolving. We aie to guide our British friends into 
the new gold-country, and show them the mines ; no- 
wise to dig out and exhaust its wealth, which, indeed, 
remains for all time inexhaustible. Once there, let 
each dig for his own behoof, and enrich himself. 

Neither, in so capricious, inexpressible a work as 
this of the Professor's can our course, now more than 
formerly, be straight-forward, step by step, but at best 
leap by leap. Significant indications stand out here 
and there ; which, for the critical eye, that looks both 
widely and narrowly, shape themselves into some 
ground-scheme of a whole. To select these with 
judgment, so that a leap from one to the other be 
possible, and, (in our old figure) by chaining them 
together, a passable bridge be effected ; this, as here- 
tofore, continues our only method. Among such light- 
spots, the following, floating in much wild matter about 
Perfectibility, has seemed worth clutching at. 

"Perhaps the most remarkable incident in modern 
history," says Teufelsdrockh, " is not the Diet of 
Worms, still less the battle of Austerlitz, Waterloo, 
Peterloo, or any other battle ; but an incident passed 
carelessly over by most historians, and treated with 
some degree of ridicule by others ; namely, George 
Fox's making to himself a suit of leather. This man, 
the first of the Quakers, and by trade a shoemaker, 
was one of those to whom, under ruder or purer form, 
the Divine Idea of the Universe is pleased to manifest 
itself ; and, across all the hulls of ignorance and earthly 
degradation, shine through, in unspeakable awfulness, 
unspeakable beauty, on their souls ; who therefore are 



214 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

rightly accounted prophets, God-possessed; or even 
gods, as in some periods it has chanced. Sitting in 
his stall, working on tanned hides, amid pincers, paste- 
horns, rosin, swine-bristles, and a nameless flood of 
rubbish, this youth had nevertheless a living spirit 
belonging to him; also an antique, inspired volume, 
through which, as through a window, it could look up- 
wards, and discern its celestial home. The task of a 
daily pair of shoes, coupled even with some prospect 
of victuals, and an honorable, mastership in eord- 
wainery, and perhaps the post of Thirdborough in his 
Hundred, as the crown of long faithful sewing, — was 
nowise satisfaction enough to such a mind ; but ever, 
amid the boring and hammering, came tones from that 
far country, came splendors and terrors ; for this poor 
cordwainer, as we said, was a man ; and the temple of 
immensity, wherein as man he had been sent to 
minister, was full of holy mystery to him. 

"The clergy of the neighbourhood, the ordained 
watchers and interpreters of that same holy mystery, 
listened with unaffected tedium to his consultations, 
and advised him, as the solution of such doubts, to 
' drink beer, and dance with the girls.' Blind leaders 
of the blind ! For what end were their tithes levied 
and eaten ; for what were their shovel-hats scooped 
out, and their surplices and cassock-aprons girt on ; 
and such a church-repairing, and chaffering, and or- 
ganing, and other racketing, held over that spot of 
God's earth, — if man were but a patent digester, 
and the belly with its adjuncts the grand reality ? 
Fox turned from them, with tears and a sacred scorn, 
back to his leather-parings and his Bible. Mountains 
of encumbrance, higher than iEtna, had been heaped 



INCIDENT IN MODERN HISTORY. 215 

over that spirit ; but it was a spirit, and would not lie 
buried there. Through long days and nights of silent 
agony, it struggled and wrestled, with a man's force, 
to be free. How its prison-mountains heaved and 
swayed tumultuously, as the giant spirit shook them 
to this hand and that, and emerged into the light of 
heaven ! That Leicester shoe-shop, had men known 
it, was a holier place than any Vatican or Loretto- 
shrine. — 'So bandaged, and hampered, and hemmed 
in,' groaned he, * with thousand requisitions, obliga- 
tions, straps, tatters, and tag-rags, I can neither see 
nor move. Not my own am I, but the world's ; and 
time flies fast, and heaven is high, and hell is deep. 
Man ! bethink thee, if thou hast power of thought ! 
Why not ; what binds me here 1 Want ! Want ! -— 
Ha, of what ? Will all the shoe-wages under the moon 
ferry me across into that far land of light ? Only 
meditation can, and devout prayer to God. I will to 
the woods'; the hollow of a tree will lodge me, wild 
berries feed me ; and for clothes, cannot I stitch myself 
one perennial suit of leather !' 

" Historical oil-painting," continues Teufelsdroch, 
** is one of the arts I never practised ; therefore shall I 
not decide whether this subject were easy of execution 
on the canvass. Yet often has it seemed to me as if 
such first outfl ashing of man's free-will, to lighten, more 
and more into day, the chaotic night that threatened 
to engulf him in its hindrances and its horrors, were 
properly the only grandeur there is in history. Let 
some living Angelo or Rosa, with seeing eye and un- 
derstanding heart, picture George Fox, on that morning, 
when he spreads out his cutting-board for the last time, 
and cuts cow-hides by unwonted patterns, and stitches 



216 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

them together into one continuous, all-including case, 
the farewell service of his all ! Stitch away, thou noble 
Fox ; every prick of that little instrument is pricking 
into the heart of slavery, and world-worship, and the 
Mammon-god ! Thy elbows jerk, as in strong swimmer- 
strokes, and every stroke is bearing thee across the 
prison-ditch, within which vanity holds her workhouse 
and rag-fair, into lands of true liberty ; were the work 
done, there is in broad Europe one free man, and thou 
art he ! 

" Thus from the lowest depth there is a path to the 
loftiest height; and for the poor also a gospel has been 
published. Surely, if, as D'Alembert asserts, my 
illustrious namesake, Diogenes, was the greatest man 
of antiquity, only that he wanted decency, then by 
stronger reason is George Fox the greatest of the 
moderns; and greater than Diogenes himself; for he, 
too, stands on the adamantine basis of his manhood, 
casting aside all props and shores ; yet not, in half- 
savage pride, undervaluing the earth ; valuing it rather, 
as a place to yield him warmth and food, he looks 
heavenward from his earth, and dwells in an element 
of mercy and worship, with a still strength, such as 
the Cynic's tub did nowise witness. Great, truly, was 
that tub ; a temple from which man's dignity and 
divinity were scornfully preached abroad ; but greater 
is the leather hull, for the same sermon was preached 
there, and not in scorn, but in love." 

George Fox's " perennial suit," with all that it held, 
has been worn quite into ashes for nigh two centuries. 
Why, in a discussion on the Perfectibility of Society, 
reproduce it now ? Not out of blind sectarian parti- 



incident: in modern history. 217 

sanship ; Teufelsdrockh himself is no Quaker ; with all 
his pacific tendencies, did we not see him, in that scene 
at the North Cape with the Archangel smuggler, 
exhibit fire-arms ? 

For us, aware of his deep Sansculottism, there is 
more meant in this passage than meets the ear. At 
the same time, who can avoid smiling at the earnest- 
ness and Boeotian simplicity, (if, indeed, there be not 
an underhand satire in it), with which that "incident" 
is here brought forward ; and, in the Professor's 
ambiguous way, as clearly perhaps as he durst in 
Weissnichtwo, recommended to imitation ? Does 
Teufelsdrockh anticipate that, in this age of refine- 
ment, any considerable class of the community, by 
way of testifying against the " Mammon-god," and 
escaping from what he calls " Vanity's Workhouse 
and Rag-fair," — where, doubtless, some of chem are 
toiled and whipped and hoodwinked sufficiently, — 
will sheathe themselves in close-fitting cases of leather ? 
The idea is ridiculous in the extreme. Will Majesty 
lay aside its robes of state, and Beauty its frills and 
train-gowns, for a second-skin of tanned hide? By 
which change Huddersfield and Manchester, and 
Coventry and Paisley, and the Fancy-Bazaar, weie 
reduced to hungry solitudes; and only Day and 
Martin could profit. For neither would Teufels- 
drockh's mad day-dream, here as we presume covertly 
intended, of levelling society (levelling it indeed with 
a vengeance, into one huge drowned marsh !), and so 
attaining the political effects of nudity without its 
frigorific or other consequences, — be thereby real* 
ized. Would not the rich man purchase a water- 
proof suit of Russia leather ; and the highborn belle 

19 



218 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

step forth in red or azure morocco, lined with shamoy ; 
the black cow-hide being left to the drudges and 
Gibeonites of the world ; and so all the old distinctions 
reestablished? 

Or has the Professor his own deeper intention ; and 
laughs in his sleeve at our strictures and glosses, 
which, indeed, are but a part thereof? 



CHAPTER II. 

CHURCH CLOTHES. 

Not less questionable is his chapter on Church 
Clothes, which has the farther distinction of being the 
shortest in the volume. We here translate it entire : 

" By Church Clothes, it need not be premised that 
I mean infinitely more than cassocks and surplices ; 
and do not at all mean the mere haberdasher Sunday 
clothes that men go to church in. Far from it! 
Church Clothes are, in our vocabulary, the forms, the 
vestures, under which men have at various periods 
embodied and represented for themselves the religious 
principle \ that is to say, invested the Divine Idea of 
the World with a sensible and practically active body, 
so that it might dwell among them as a living and life- 
giving Word. 

" These are unspeakably the most important of all 
the vestures and garnitures of human existence. 
They are first spun and woven, I may say, by that 
wonder of wonders, Society ; for it is still only when 
* two or three are gathered together,' that religion, 
spiritually existent, and indeed indestructible, however 



CHURCH CLOTHES. 219 

latent, in eaeh, first outwardly manifests itself (as 
with ' cloven tongues of fire'), and seeks to be em- 
bodied in a visible communion and church militant. 
Mystical, more than magical, is that communing of 
soul with soul, both looking heavenward. Here pro- 
perly soul first speaks with soul ; for only in looking 
heavenward, take it in what sense you may, not in 
looking earthward, does what we can call union, 
mutual love, society, begin to be possible. How true 
is that of Novalis : ' It is certain, my belief gains 
quite infinitely, the moment I can convince another 
mind thereof!' Gaze thou in the face of thy brother, 
in those eyes where plays the lambent fire of kindness, 
or in those where rages the lurid conflagration of anger ; 
feel how thy own so quiet soul is straightway involun- 
tary kindled with the like, and ye blaze and reverberate 
on each other, till it is all one limitless confluent flame 
(of embracing love or of deadly-grappling hate); and 
then say what miraculous virtue goes out of man into 
man. But if so, through all the thick-plied hulls of our 
earthly life ; how much more when it is of the Divine 
life we speak, and inmost Me is, as it were, brought 
into contact with inmost Me ! 

" Thus was it that I said, the Church Clothes are 
first spun and woven by society ; outward religion ori- 
ginates by society; society becomes possible by reli- 
gion. Nay, perhaps every conceivable society, past 
and present, may well be figured as properly and 
wholly a church, in one or other of these three predi- 
caments : an audibly preaching and prophesying church, 
which is the best ; second, a church that struggles to 
preach and prophesy, but cannot as yet, till its Pente- 
cost come ; and third and worst, a church gone dumb 



220 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

with old age, or which only mumbles delirium prior to 
dissolution. Whoso fancies that by Church is here 
meant chapter-houses and catherals, or by Preaching 
and Prophesying, mere speech and chanting, let him," 
says the oracular Professor, " read on, light of heart 
(getrosten Muthes). 

"But with regard to your Church proper, and 
the Church Clothes specially recognised as Church 
Clothes, I remark, fearlessly enough, that without 
such vestures and sacred tissues society has not ex- 
isted, and will not exist. For if government is, so to 
speak, the outward skin of the body politic, holding 
the whole together and protecting it ; and all your 
craft-guilds, and associations for industry, of hand or 
of head, are the fleshly Clothes, the muscular and 
osseous tissues (lying under such skin), whereby 
society stands and works; — then is leligion the in- 
most pericardial and nervous tissue, which ministers 
life and warm circulation to the whole. Without 
which pericardial tissue the bones and muscles (of 
industry) were inert, or animated only by a Galvanic 
vitality ; the skin would become a shrivelled pelt, or 
fast-rotting law-hide ; and society itself a dead car- 
cass, — deserving to be buried. Men were no longer 
social, but gregarious ; which latter state also could 
not continue, but must gradually issue in universal 
selfish discord, hatred, savage isolation, and disper- 
sion ; — whereby, as we might continue to say, the 
very dust and dead body of society would have evapo- 
rated and become abolished. Such, and so all-important, 
all-sustaining, are the Church Clothes, to civilized or 
even to rational man. 

" Meanwhile, in our era of the world, those same 



CHURCH CLOTHES. 221 

Church Clothes have gone sorrowfully out at elbows ; 
nay, far worse, many of them have become mere 
hollow shapes, or masks, under which no living figure 
or spirit any longer dwells ; but only spiders and 
unclean beetles, in horrid accumulation, drive their 
trade ; and the mask still glares on you with its glass- 
eyes, in ghastly affectation of life, — some generation 
and half after religion has quite withdrawn from it, 
and in unnoticed nooks is weaving for herself new 
vestures, wherewith to reappear, and bless us, or our 
sons, or grandsons. As a priest, or interpreter of the 
Holy, is the noblest and highest of all men, so is a 
sham-priest (Scheinpriester) the falsest and basest. 
Neither is it doubtful that his canonicals, were they 
popes' tiaras, will one day be torn from him, to make 
bandages for the wounds of mankind ; or even to 
burn into tinder, for general scientific or culinary 
purposes. 

" All which, as out of place here, falls to be handled 
in my second volume, On the Palingenesia, or New 
Birth of Society ; which volume, as treating practi- 
cally of the wear, destruction, and re-texture of spir- 
itual tissues, or garments, forms, properly speaking, 
the transcendental or ultimate portion of this my 
work on Clothes, and is already in a state of forward- 
ness." 

And herewith, no farther exposition, note, or com- 
mentary being added, does Teufelsdrockh, and must 
his Editor now, terminate the singular chapter on 

Church Clothes ! 

19* 



222 SARTOR RESARTUS. 



CHAPTER III. 

SYMBOLS. 

Probably it will elucidate the drift of these fore- 
going obscure utterances, if we here insert somewhat 
of our Professor's speculations on Symbols. To state 
his whole doctrine, indeed, were beyond our compass, 
Nowhere is he more mysterious, impalpable, than in 
this of "Fantasy being the organ of the Godlike;" 
and how " Man thereby, though based, to all seeming, 
on the small Visible, does novertheless extend down 
into the infinite deeps of the Invisible, of which Invisi- 
ble, indeed, his life is properly the bodying forth." Let 
us, omitting these high transcendental aspects of the 
matter, study to glean (whether from the paper-bags or 
the printed volume) what little seems logical and prac- 
tical, and cunningly arrange it into such degree of co- 
herence as it will assume. By way of proem, take the 
following noHnjudicious remarks : 

" The benignant efficacies of concealment," cries 
our Professor, " who shall speak or sing ? Silence 
and Secrecy ! Altars might still be raised to them 
(were this an altar-building time) for universal wor- 
ship. Silence is the element in which great things 
fashion themselves together ; that at length they may 
emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of 
life, which they are thenceforth to rule. Not William 
the Silent only, but all the considerable men I have 
known, and the most undiplomatic and unstrategic of 
these, forbore to babble of what they were creating and 
projecting. Nay, in thy own mean perplexities, do 



SYMBOLS. 223 

thou thyself but hold thy tongue for one day ; on the 
morrow, how much clearer are thy purposes and duties ; 
what wreck and rubbish have those mute workmen 
within thee swept away, when intrusive noises were 
shut out ! Speech is too often not, as the Frenchman 
denned it, the art of concealing thought ; but of quite 
stifling and suspending thought, so that there is none 
to conceal. Speech, too, is great, but not the greatest. 
As the Swiss Inscription says : Sprechen ist silbern, 
Schweigen ist golden (Speech is silvern, Silence is 
golden) ; or, as I might rather express it : Speech is of 
Time, Silence is of Eternity. 

" Bees will not work except in darkness ; thought 
will not work except in silence ; neither will virtue 
work except in secrecy. Let not thy right hand know 
what thy left hand doeth ! Neither shalt thou prate 
even to thy own heart of ' those secrets known to all.' 
Is not shame the soil of all virtue, of all good manners, 
and good morals ? Like other plants, virtue will not 
grow unless its root be hidden, buried from the eye of 
the sun. Let the sun shine on it, nay, do but look at 
it privily thyself, the root withers, and no flower will 
glad thee. O my friends, when we view the fair clus- 
tering flowers that over-wreathe, for example, the mar- 
riage-bower, and encircle man's life with the fragrance 
and hues of heaven, what hand will not smite the foul 
plunderer that grubs them up by the roots, and, with 
grinning, grunting satisfaction, shows us the dung they 
nourish in ! Men speak much of the printing-press 
with its newspapers ; duHimmel! what are these to 
Clothes and the tailor's goose ?" 

" Of kin to the so incalculable influences of con- 
cealment, and connected with still greater things, is the 



224 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

wondrous agency of Symbols. In a symbol there is 
concealment, and yet revelation ; here, therefore, by 
silence and by speech acting together, comes a doubled 
significance. And if both the speech be itself high, 
and the silence fit and noble, how expressive will their 
union be ! Thus in many a painted device, or simple 
seal-emblem, the commonest truth stands out to us pro- 
claimed with quite new emphasis. 

" For it is here that Fantasy, with her mystic won- 
der-land, plays into the small prose domain of Sense, 
and becomes incorporated therewith. In the symbol 
proper, what we can call a symbol, there is ever, more 
or less distinctly and directly, some embodyment and 
revelation of the Infinite ; the Infinite is made to 
blend itself with the Finite, to stand visible, and as it 
were attainable, there. By symbols, accordingly, is 
man guided and commanded, made happy, made 
wretched. He everywhere finds himself encompassed 
with symbols, recognised as such or not recognised. 
The universe is but one vast symbol of God ; nay, if 
thou wilt have it, what is man himself but a symbol of 
God ; is not all that he does symbolical ; a revelation 
to sense of the mystic God-given force that is in him ; 
a * Gospel of Freedom.' which he, the ' Messias of 
Nature,' preaches, as he can, by act and word? Not 
a hut he builds, but is the visible embodyment of a 
thought ; but bears visible record of invisible things ; 
but is, in the transcendental sense, symbolical as well 
as real." 

"Man," says the Professor elsewhere, in quite 
antipodal contrast with these high-soaring delinea- 
tions, which we have here cut short on the verge of 
the Inane, " man is by birth somewhat of an owl. 



SYMBOLS. 225 

Perhaps, too, of all the owleries that ever possessed 
him the most owlish, if we consider it, is that of your 
actually existing motive-millwrights. Fantastic tricks 
enough has man played in his time ; has fancied him- 
self to be most things, down even to an animated 
heap of glass; but to fancy himself a dead iron- 
balance for weighing pains and pleasures on was 
reserved for this his latter era. There stands he, his 
universe one huge manger, filled with hay and thistles 
to be weighed against each other ; and looks long- 
eared enough. Alas, poor devil ! spectres are ap- 
pointed to haunt him. One age, he is hag-ridden, 
bewitched; the next, priestridden, befooled; in all 
ages, bedevilled. And now the Genius of Mechanism 
smothers him worse than any nightmare did ; till the 
soul is nigh choked out of him, and only a kind of 
digestive, mechanic life remains. In earth and in 
heaven he can see nothing but mechanism ; has fear 
for nothing else, hope in nothing else. The world 
would, indeed, grind him to pieces; but cannot he 
fathom the Doctrine of Motives, and cunningly 
compute these, and mechanize them to grind the other 
way ? 

" Were he not, as has been said, purblinded by en- 
chantment, you had but to bid him open his eyes and 
look. In which country, in which time, was it hith- 
erto that man's history, or the history of any man, 
went on by calculated or calculable ' Motives V What 
make ye of your Christianities, and Chivalries, and 
Reformations, and Marseillese Hymns, and Reigns of 
Terror? .Nay, has not, perhaps, the Motive-grinder 
himself been in love? Did he never stand so much as 



226 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

a contested election ? Leave him to time, and the 
medicating virtue of nature." 

" Yes, friends," elsewhere observes the Professor, 
" not our logical, mensurative faculty, but our imagi- 
native one is king over us ; I might say, priest and 
prophet, to lead us heavenward ; or magician and 
wizard, to lead us hellward. Nay, even for the basest 
sensualist, what is sense but the implement of fan- 
tasy ; the vessel it drinks out of? Ever in the dullest 
existence, there is a sheen either of inspiration or of 
madness (thou partly hast it in thy choice, which of 
the two), that gleams in from the circumambient Eter- 
nity, and colors with its own hues our little islet of 
Time. The understanding is indeed thy window, too 
clear thou canst not make it ; but fantasy is thy eye, 
with its color-giving retina, healthy or diseased. 
Have not I myself known five hundred living soldiers 
sabred into crows' meat, for a piece of glazed cotton 
which they called their flag; which, had you sold it 
at any market-cross, would not have brought above 
three groschen ? Did not the whole Hungarian nation 
rise, like some tumultuous, moon-stirred Atlantic, when 
Kaiser Joseph pocketed their Iron Crown ; an imple- 
ment, as was sagaciously observed, in size and com- 
mercial value, little differing from a horseshoe ? It 
is in and through Symbols that man, consciously or 
unconsciously, lives, works, and has his being. Those 
ages, moreover, are accounted the noblest which can 
the best recognise symbolical worth, and prize it the 
highest. For is not a symbol ever, to him who has 
eyes for it, some dimmer or clearer revelation of the 
godlike ? 

" Of symbols, however, I remark farther, that they 



SYMBOLS. 227 

have both an extrinsic and intrinsic value ; oftenest 
the former only. What, for instance, was in that 
clouted shoe which the Peasants bore aloft with them 
as ensign in their Bauernkrieg (Peasants' War) ? Or 
in the wallet-and-stafF round which the Netherland 
Gueux, glorying in that nickname of Beggars, heroi- 
cally rallied and prevailed, though against King Philip 
himself ? Intrinsic significance these had none ; only 
extrinsic ; as the accidental standards of multitudes 
more, or less sacredly uniting together; in which union 
itself, as above noted, there is ever something mys- 
tical and borrowing of the godlike. Under a like 
category, too, stand or stood, the stupidest heraldic 
coats-of-arms ; military banners everywhere ; and gen- 
erally, all national or other sectarian costumes and 
customs. They have no intrinsic, necessary divineness 
or even worth ; but have acquired an extrinsic one. 
Nevertheless through all these there glimmers some- 
thing of a divine idea; as through military banners 
themselves, the divine idea of duty, of heroic daring ; 
in some instances, of freedom, of right. Nay, the 
highest ensign that men ever met and embraced under, 
the Cross itself, had no meaning save an accidental, 
extrinsic one. 

" Another matter it is, however, when your symbol 
has intrinsic meaning, and is of itself Jit that men 
should unite round it. Let but the Godlike manifest 
itself to sense; let but Eternity look, more or less 
visibly, through the Time-figure (Zeitbild) ! Then is it 
fit that men unite there, and worship together before 
such symbol ; and so from day to day, and from age to 
age, superadd to it new divineness. 

" Of this latter sort are all true works of art ; in 



228 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

them (if thou know a work of art from a daub of 
artifice) wilt thou discern Eternity looking through 
Time ; the Godlike rendered visible. Here, too, may 
an intrinsic value gradually superadd itself. Thus 
certain Iliads, and the like, have, in three thousand 
years, attained quite new significance. But nobler 
than all in this kind are the lives of heroic, God- 
inspired men ; for what other work of art is so divine ? 
In death, too, in the death of the just, as the last per- 
fection of a work of art, may we not discern symbolic 
meaning ? In that divinely transfigured sleep, as of 
vietory, resting over the beloved face which now knows 
thee no more, read (if thou canst, for tears) the con- 
fluence of Time with Eternity, and some gleam of the 
latter peering through. 

" Highest of all symbols are those wherein the 
artist or poet has risen into prophet, and all men can 
recognise a present God, and worship the same ; I 
mean religious symbols. Various enough have been 
such religious symbols, what we call Religions $ as 
men stood in this stage of culture or the other, and 
could worse or better body forth the Godlike ; some 
symbols with a transient intrinsic worth ; many with 
only an extrinsic. If thou ask to what height man 
has carried it in this matter, look on our divinest 
symbol; on Jesus of Nazareth, and his life, and his 
biography, and what followed therefrom. Higher has 
the human thought not yet reached. This is Chris- 
tianity and Christendom; a symbol of quite peren- 
nial, infinite character ; whose significance will ever 
demand to be anew inquired into, and anew made 
manifest. 

" But, on the whole, as time adds much to the 



SYMBOLS. 229 

sacredness of symbols, so likewise in his progress he 
at length defaces, or even desecrates them ; and sym- 
bols, like all terrestrial garments, wax old. Homer's 
Epos has not ceased to be true ; yet it is no longer 
our Epos, but shines in the distance, if clearer and 
clearer, yet also smaller and smaller, like a receding 
star. It needs a scientific telescope, it needs to be 
reinterpreted and artificially brought near us, before 
we can so much as know that it was a sun. So like- 
wise a day comes when the Runic Thor, with his 
Eddas, must withdraw into dimness ; and many an 
African Mumbo-Jumbo, and Indian Wau-Wau be 
utterly abolished. For all things, even celestial lumi- 
naries, much more atmospheric meteors, have their 
rise, their culmination, their decline." 

" Small is this which thou tellest me, that the royal 
sceptre is but a piece of gilt wood ; that the Pyx has 
become a most foolish box, and truly, as Ancient Pis- 
tol thought, *of little price.' Aright conjuror might 
I name thee, couldst thou conjure back into these 
wooden tools the divine virtue they once held." 

" Of this thing, however, be certain ; wouldst thou 
plant for eternity, then plant into the deep, infinite 
faculties of man, his fantasy and heart ; wouldst thou 
plant for year and day, then plant into his shallow, 
superficial faculties, his self-love and arithmetical un- 
derstanding, what will grow there. A hierarch, there- 
fore, and pontiff of the world will we call him, the 
poet and inspired maker, who, Prometheus-like, can 
shape new symbols, and bring new fire from heaven 
to fix it there. Such, too, will not always be wanting ; 
neither, perhaps, now are. Meanwhile, as the aver- 
age of matters goes, we account him legislator and 

20 



230 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

wise who can so much as tell when a symbol has 
grown old, and gently remove it. 

" When, as the last English* coronation was pre- 
paring," concludes this wonderful Professor, " I read 
in their newspapers that the ' Champion of England,' 
he who must offer battle to the universe for his new 
king, had brought it so far that he could now ' mount 
his horse with little assistance,' I said to myself: Here 
also have we a symbol well nigh superannuated. 
Alas, move whithersoever you may, are not the tatters 
and rags of superannuated, worn-out symbols (in this 
rag-fair of a world) dropping off everywhere, to hood- 
wink, to halter, to tether you ; nay, if you shake them 
not aside, threatening to accumulate, and perhaps pro- 
duce suffocation?" 



CHAPTER IV. 

HELOTAGE. 

At this point we determine on adverting shortly, or 
rather, reverting, to a certain tract of Hofrath Heu- 
schrecke's, entitled Institute for the Repression of Po- 
pulation; which lies, dishonourably enough (with torn 
leaves, and a perceptible smell of aloetic drugs), 
stuffed into the bag Pisces. Not, indeed, for sake of 
the tract itself, which we admire little ; but of the 
marginal notes, evidently in Teufelsdrockh's hand, 

* Now, last but one. — Ed. 



HELOTAGE. 231 

which rather copiously fringe it. A few of these may- 
be in their right place heie. 

Into the Hofrath's Institute, with its extraordinary- 
schemes, and machinery of corresponding boards and 
the like, we shall not so much as glance. Enough for 
us to understand that Heuschrecke is a disciple of 
Malthus ; and so zealous for the doctrine, that his 
zeal almost literally eats him up. A deadly fear of 
population possesses the Hofrath ; something like a 
fixed idea; undoubtedly akin to the more diluted 
forms of madness. Nowhere, in that quarter of his 
intellectual world, is there light ; nothing but a grim 
shadow of hunger ; open mouths opening wider and 
wider ; a world to terminate by the frightfullest con- 
summation ; by its too dense inhabitants, famished 
into delirium, universally eating one another. To 
make air for himself in which strangulation, choking 
enough to a benevolent heart, the Hofrath founds, or 
proposes to found, this Institute of his, as the best he 
can do. It is only with our Professor's comments 
thereon that we concern ourselves. 

First, then, remark that Teufelsdrockh, as a specu- 
lative radical, has his own notions about human 
dignity ; that the Zahdarm palaces and courtesies 
have not made him forgetful of the Futteral cottages. 
On the blank cover of Heuschrecke's tract, we find the 
following, indistinctly engrossed : 

" Two men I honor, and no third. Fiist, the toil- 
worn craftsman, that with earth-made implement labo- 
riously conquers the earth, and makes her man's. 
Venerable to me is the hard hand ; crooked, coarse ; 
wherein, notwithstanding, lies a cunning virtue, inde- 
feasibly royal, as of the sceptre of this planet. Ve 



232 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

nerable, too, is the rugged face, all weather-tanned, 
besoiled, with its rude intelligence ! for it is the face 
of a man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable 
for thy rudeness, and even because we must pity as 
well as love thee ! Hardly-entreated brother ! For 
us was thy back so bent, for us were thy straight 
limbs and fingers so deformed. Thou wert our con- 
script, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles 
wert so marred. For in thee, too, lay a God-created 
form, but it was not to be unfolded ; encrusted must it 
stand with the thick adhesions and defacements of 
labor ; and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know 
freedom. Yet toil on, toil on ; thou art in thy duty, 
be out of it who may ; thou toilest for the altogether 
indispensable, for daily bread. 

" A second man I honor, and still more highly ; 
him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensa- 
ble ; not daily bread, but the bread of life. Is not he, 
too, in his duty ; endeavouring towards inward har- 
mony ; revealing this, by act or by word, through all 
his outward endeavours, be they high or low ? Highest 
of all, when his outward and his inward endeavour 
are one ; when we can name him artist ; not earthly 
craftsman only, but inspired thinker, that with heaven- 
made implement conquers heaven for us ! If the poor 
and humble toil that we have food, must not the high 
and glorious toil for him, in return, that we have light 
and guidance, freedom, immortality ? — These two, in 
all their degrees, I honor ; all else is chaff and dust, 
which let the wind blow whither it listeth. 

" Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find 
both dignities united ; and he, that must toil outwardly 
for the lowest of man's wants, is also toiling inwardly 



HELOTAGE. 233 

for the highest. Sublimer in this world know I 
nothing than a peasant saint, could such now any- 
where be met with. Such a one will take thee back to 
Nazareth itself; thou wilt see the splendor of heaven 
spring forth from the humblest depths of earth, like a 
light shining in great darkness." 

And again: "It is not because of his toils that I 
lament for the poor. We must all toil, or steal (how- 
soever we name our stealing), which is worse ; no 
faithful workman finds his task a pastime. The 
poor is hungry and athirst, but for him also there 
is food and drink ; he is heavy-laden and weary, but 
for him also the heavens send sleep, and of the 
deepest. In his smoky cribs, a clear, dewy heaven of 
rest envelops him, and fitful glitterings of cloud- 
skirted dreams. But what I do mourn over is that the 
lamp of his soul should go out ; that no ray of 
heavenly, or even of earthly knowledge should visit 
him ; but, only in the haggard darkness, like two 
spectres, Fear and Indignation. Alas, while the body 
stands so broad and brawny, must the soul lie blinded, 
dwarfed, stupified, almost annihilated ? Alas, was 
this, too, a Breath of God; bestowed in heaven, but 
on earth never to be unfolded? — That there should 
one man die ignorant who had capacity for knowledge, 
this I call a tragedy, were it to happen more than 
twenty times in the minute, as by some computations 
it does. The miserable fraction of science which 
united mankind, in a wide universe of nescience, has 
acquired, why is not this, with all diligence, imparted 
to all?" 

Quite in an opposite strain is the following: "The 
old Spartans had a wiser method ; and went out and 

20* 



234 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

hunted down their Helots, and speared and spitted 
them, when they grew too numerous. With our 
improved fashions of hunting, Herr Hofrath, now 
after the invention of fire-arms, and standing armies, 
how much easier were such a hunt! Perhaps in the 
most thickly-peopled country, some three days annu- 
ally might suffice to shoot all the ablebodied paupers 
that had accumulated within the year. Let govern- 
ments think of this. The expense were trifling; nay, 
the very carcases would pay it. Have them salted 
and barrelled ; could not you victual therewith, if not 
army and navy, yet richly such infirm paupers, in 
workhouses and elsewhere, as enlightened charity, 
dreading no evil of them, might see good to keep 
alive?" 

" And yet," writes he, farther on, " there must be 
something wrong. A full-formed horse will, in any 
market, bring from twenty to as high as two hundred 
Friedrichs d'or ; such is his worth to the world. A 
full-formed man is not only worth nothing to the 
world, but the world could afford him a round sum, 
would he simply engage to go and hang himself. 
Nevertheless, which of the two was the more cun- 
ningly devised article, even as an engine? Good 
heavens ! A white European man, standing on his 
two legs, with his two five-fingered hands at his 
shackle-bones, and miraculous head on his shoul- 
ders, is worth, I should say, from fifty to a hundred 
horses !" 

"True, thou Gold-Hofrath !" cries the Professor 
elsewhere ; " Too crowded, indeed. Meanwhile, what 
portion of this inconsiderable terraqueous globe have 



THE PHENIX. 235 

ye actually tilled and delved, till it will grow no more? 
How thick stands your population in the Pampas and 
Savannas of America ; round ancient Carthage, and 
in the interior of Africa ; on both slopes of the Altaic 
chain, in the central platform of Asia; in Spain, 
Greece, Turkey, Crim Tartary, the Curragh of Kil- 
dare ? One man, in one year, as I have understood 
it, if you lend him earth, will feed himself and nine 
others. Alas, where now are the Hengsts and Alarics 
of our still glowing, still expanding Europe ; who, 
when their home is grown too narrow, will enlist, and, 
like fire-pillars, guide onwards those superfluous mas- 
ses of indomitable living valor ; equipped, not now 
with the battle-axe and war-chariot, but with the steam- 
engine and ploughshare ? Where are they ? — Pre- 
serving their game !" 



CHAPTER V. 

THE PHENIX. 

Putting which four singular chapters together, and 
alongside of them numerous hints, and even direct 
utterances, scattered over these writings of his, we 
come upon the startling, yet not quite unlooked-for 
conclusion, that Teufelsdrockh is one of those who 
considers society, properly so called, to be as good as 
extinct ; and that only the gregarious feelings, and old 
inherited habitudes, at this juncture, hold us from dis- 
persion, and universal national, civil, domestic, and 
personal war ! He says expressly : " For the last three 



236 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

centuries, above all for the last three quarters of a cen- 
tury, that same pericardial nervous tissue (as we named 
it) of religion, where lies the life-essence of society, 
has been smote at and perforated, needfully and need- 
lessly ; till now it is quite rent into shreds ; and soci- 
ety, long pining, diabetic, consumptive, can be regarded 
as defunct ; for those spasmodic, galvanic sprawlings 
are not life, neither, indeed, will they endure, galvan- 
ize as you may, beyond two days." 

"Call ye that a society," cries he again, "where 
there is no longer any social idea extant ; not so much 
as the idea of a common home, but only of a common, 
over-crowded lodging-house ? Where each, isolated, 
regardless of his neighbour, turned against his neighbour, 
clutches what he can get, and cries ' Mine !' and calls 
it peace, because in the cut-purse and cut-throat scram- 
ble, no steel-knives, but only a far cunninger sort, can 
be employed ? Where friendship, communion, has 
become an incredible tradition ; and your holiest Sa- 
cramental supper is a smoking tavern-dinner, with cook 
for Evangelist ? Where your priest has no tongue but 
for plate-licking; and your high guides and governors 
cannot guide; but on all hands hear it passionately 
proclaimed : Laissez faire ; Leave us alone of your 
guidance, such light is darker than darkness ; eat your 
wages, and sleep ! 

" Thus, too," continues he, " must an observant 
eye discern everywhere that saddest spectacle : the 
poor perishing, like neglected, foundered draught-cattle, 
of hunger and overwork; the rich, still more wretched- 
ly, of idleness, satiety, and overgrowth. The highest 
in rank, at length, without honor from the lowest ; 
scarcely with a little mouth-honor, as from tavern- 



THE PHENIX. 237 

waiters who expect to put it in the bill. Once sacred 
symbols fluttering as empty pageants, whereof men 
grudge even the expense ; a world becoming dismantled : 
in one word, the Church fallen speechless, from obe- 
sity and apoplexy ; the State shrunken into a Police- 
Office, straitened to get its pay !" 

We might ask, Are there many "observant eyes," 
belonging to practical men, in England or elsewhere, 
which have descried- these phenomena ; or is it only 
from the mystic elevation of a German Wahngasse 
that such wonders are visible ? Teufelsdrockh eon? 
tends that the aspect of a "deceased or expiring 
society " fronts us everywhere, so that whoso runs 
may read. " What, for example," says he, " is the 
universally arrogated virtue, almost the sole remaining 
Catholic virtue, of these days ? For some half cen- 
tury, it has been the thing you name ' Independence.' 
Suspicion of * Servility,' of reverence for superiors, 
the very dogleech is anxious to disavow. Fools ! 
Were your superiors worthy to govern, and you worthy 
to obey, reverence for them were even your only 
possible freedom. Independence, in all kinds, is rebel- 
lion ; if unjust rebellion, why parade it, and everywhere 
prescribe it ? 

But what then ? Are we returning, as Rousseau 
prayed, to the state of nature ? " The Soul Politic 
having departed," says Teufelsdrockh, " what can 
follow but that the Body Politic be decently interred, 
to avoid putrescence ? Liberals, Economists, Utilita- 
rians enough I see marching with its bier, and chant- 
ing loud paeans, towards the funeral-pile, where, amid 
wailings from some, and saturnalian revelries from 
the most, the venerable corpse is to be burnt. Or, in 



238 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

plain words, that these men, Liberals, Utilitarians, or 
whatsoever they are called, will ultimately carry their 
point, and dissever and destroy most existing institu- 
tions of society, seems a thing which has some time 
ago ceased to be doubtful. 

" Do we not see a little subdivision of the grand 
Utilitarian armament come to light even in insulated 
England ? A living nucleus, that will attract and 
grow, does at length appear there also ; and under 
curious phasis ; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, 
and so far in rear of the others as to fancy itself the 
van. Our European Mechanizers are a sect of bound- 
less diffusion, activity, and cooperative spirit. Has not 
Utilitarianism flourished in high places of thought, 
here among ourselves, and in every European coun- 
try, at some time or other, within the last fifty years ? 
If now in all countries, except perhaps England, it 
has ceased to flourish, or indeed to exist, among 
thinkers, and sunk to journalists and the popular 
mass, — who sees not that, as hereby it no longer 
preaches, so the reason is, it now needs no preaching, 
but is in full, universal action, the doctrine every- 
where known and enthusiastically laid to heart? The 
fit pabulum, in these times, for a certain rugged 
workshop-intellect and heart, nowise without their cor- 
responding workshop-strength and ferocity, it requires 
but to be stated in such scenes to make proselytes 
enough. — Admirably calculated for destroying, only 
not for rebuilding ! It spreads like a sort of dog- 
madness ; till the whole world-kennel will be rabid ; 
then wo to the huntsmen, with or without their whips ! 
They should have given the quadrupeds water," adds 



THE PHENIX. 239 

lie, «* the water, namely, of knowledge and of life, 
while it was yet time." 

Thus, if Professor Teufelsdrockh can be relied on, 
we are at this hour in a most critical condition ; be- 
leaguered by that boundless " Armament of Mechani- 
zers" and Unbelievers, threatening to strip us bare ! 
" The world," says he, " as it needs must, is under a 
process of devastation and waste ; which, whether by 
silent assiduous corrosion, or open, quicker combus- 
tion, as the case chances, will effectually enough 
annihilate the past forms of society; replace them 
with what it may. For the present, it is contemplated 
that when man's whole spiritual interests are once 
divested, these innumerable stript-off garments shall 
mostly be burnt ; but the sounder rags among them 
be quilted together into one huge Irish watch-coat, for 
the defence of the body only!" — This, we think, is 
but Job's news to the humane reader. 

" Nevertheless," cries Teufelsdrockh, " who can 
hinder it ; who is there that can clutch into the wheel- 
spokes of Destiny, and say to the Spirit of the Time: 
Turn back, I command thee? — Wiser were it that we 
yielded to the inevitable and inexorable, and accounted 
even this the best." 

Nay, might not an attentive editor, drawing his own 
inferences from what stands written, conjecture that 
Teufelsdrockh individually had yielded to this same 
" Inevitable and Inexorable " heartily enough ; and 
now sat waiting the issue, with his natural diabolico- 
angelical indifference, if not even placidity ? Did we 
not hear him complain that the world was a " huge 
rag-fair," and the " rags and tatters of old symbols " 
were raining down every where, like to drift him in, 



240 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

and soffaeate him? What with those "unhunted 
Helots" of his; and the uneven sic-vos-non-vobis pres^ 
sure, and hard, crashing collision he is pleased to 
discern in existing things ; what with the so hateful 
" empty masks," full of beetles and spiders, yet glar- 
ing out on him, from their glass-eyes, " with a ghastly 
affectation of life," — we feel entitled to conclude 
him even willing that much should be thrown to the 
Devil, so it were but done gently ! Safe himself in 
that "Pinnacle of Weissnichtwo," he would consent * 
with a tragic solemnity, that the monster UTILITA- 
RIA, held back, indeed, and moderated by nose-rings, 
halters, foot-shackles, and every conceivable modifica- 
tion of rope, should go forth to do her work; to 
tread down old ruinous palaces and temples, with her- 
broad hoof, till the whole were trodden down, that 
new and better might be built. Remarkable in this 
point of view are the following sentences : 

" Society," says he, " is not dead. That carcass, 
which you call dead society, is but her mortal coil 
which she has shuffled off, to assume a nobler ; she 
herself, through perpetual metamorphoses, in fairer 
and fairer development, has to live till time also merge 
in eternity. Wheresoever two or three living men are 
gathered together, there is society; or there it will 
be, with its cunning mechanisms, and stupendous 
structures, overspreading this little globe, and reaching 
upwards to Heaven and downwards to Gehenna ; for 
always under one or the other figure, has it two au- 
thentic revelations, of a God and of a Devil; the pulpit, 
namely, and the gallows." 

Indeed, we already heard him speak of " Religion, 
in unnoticed nooks, weaving for herself new ves- 



The phenix. 241 

tures ;"— -Teufelsdrockh himself being one of the 
loom-treadles ? Elsewhere he quotes without censure 
that strange aphorism of Saint-Simon's, concerning 
which and whom so much were to be said : Edge 
d'or, qxCune aveugle tradition a place jusqu 1 ici dans 
le passe, est devant nous ; The golden age which a 
blind tradition has hitherto placed in the past is before 
us. — But listen again. 

" When the Phenix is fanning her funeral pyre, 
will there not be sparks flying ? Alas, some millions 
of men, and among them such as a Napoleon, have 
already, been licked into that high-eddying flame, and, 
like moths, consumed there. Still also have we to 
fear that incautious beards will get singed. 

" For the rest, in what year of grace such Phenix- 
cremation will be completed, you need not ask. The 
law of perseverance is among the deepest in man. By 
nature he hates change ; seldom will he quit his old 
house till it has actually fallen about his ears. Thus 
have I seen solemnities linger as ceremonies, sacred 
symbols as idle pageants, to the extent of three hun- 
dred years and more, after all life and sacredness had 
evaporated out of them. And then, finally, what time 
the Phenix death-birth itself will require depends on 
unseen contingencies. — Meanwhile, would Destiny 
offer mankind, that after, say two centuries of convul- 
sion and conflagration, more or less vivid, the fire-cre- 
ation should be accomplished, and we find ourselves 
again in a living society, and no longer fighting, but 
working, — were it not, perhaps, prudent in mankind 
to strike the bargain?" 

Thus is Teufelsdrockh content that old sick society 

21 



242 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

should be deliberately burnt (alas, with quite other 
fuel than spice-wood !); in the faith that she is a Phe- 
nix ; and that a new, heaven-born young one will rise 
out of her ashes ! We ourselves, restricted to the 
duty of indicator, shall forbear commentary. Mean- 
while, will not the judicious reader shake his head, 
and reproachfully, yet more in sorrow than in anger, 
say or think : From a Doctor Utriusque Juris, titular 
Professor in a university, and man to whom hitherto, 
for his services, society, bad as she is, has given not 
only food and raiment (of a kind), but books, tobacco, 
and gukguk, we expected more gratitude to his bene- 
factress ; and less of a blind trust in the future, which 
resembles that rather of a philosophical fatalist and 
enthusiast, than of a solid householder paying scot and 
lot in a Christian country. 



CHAPTER VI. 



OLD CLOTHES. 



As mentioned above, Teufelsdrockh, though a Sans- 
culottist, is in practice probably the politest man 
extant. His whole heart and life are penetrated and 
informed with the spirit of politeness ; a noble, natu- 
ral courtesy shines through him,, beautifying his 
vagaries ; like sunlight, making a rosy-fingered, rain- 
bow-dyed Aurora out of mere aqueous clouds ; nay, 
brightening London smoke itself into gold vapor, as 
from the crucible of an alchemist. Hear in what 



OLD CLOTHES. 243 

earnest, though fantastic wise he expresses himself on 
this head : 

"Shall courtesy be done only to the rich, and only 
by the rich ? In good-breeding, which differs, if at 
all, from high-breeding, only as it gracefully remem- 
bers the rights of others, rather than gracefully insists 
on its own rights, I discern no special connexion with 
wealth or birth ; but rather that it lies in human 
nature itself, and is due from all men towards all men. 
Of a truth, were your schoolmaster at his post, and 
worth anything when there, this, with so much else, 
would be reformed. Nay, each man were then also 
his neighbour's schoolmaster ; till, at length, a rude- 
visaged, unman nered peasant could no more be met 
with than a peasant unacquainted with botanical phy- 
siology, or who felt not that the clod he broke was 
created in heaven. 

" For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-ham- 
mer, art thou not alive ; is not this thy brother alive ? 
; There is but one temple in the world,' says Novalis, 
« and that temple is the body of man. Nothing is 
holier than this high form. Bending before men is a 
reverence done to this revelation in the flesh. We 
touch heaven, when we lay our hands on a human 
body.' 

" On which ground, I would fain carry it farther 
than most do ; and whereas the English Johnson only 
bowed to every clergyman, or man with a shovel-hat, 
I would bow to every man with any sort of hat, or 
with no hat whatever. Is he not a temple, then ; the 
visible manifestation and impersonation of the Divini- 
ty ? And yet, alas, such indiscriminate bowing serves 
not. For there is a Devil dwells in man, as well as a 



244 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Divinity ; and too often the how is but pocketed by the 
former. It would go to the pocket of Vanity (which 
is your clearest phasis of the Devil, in these times); 
therefore must we withhold it. 

" The gladder am I, on the other hand, to do 
reverence to those shells and outer husks of the body, 
wherein no devilish passion any longer lodges, but 
only the pure emblem and effigies of man : I mean, 
to empty, or even to cast Clothes. Nay, is it not to 
Clothes that most men do reverence ; to the fine, 
frogged broadcloth, nowise to the ' straddling animal 
with bandy legs' which it holds, and makes a digni- 
tary of ? Who ever saw any lord my-lorded in tat- 
tered blanket, fastened with wooden skewer 1 Nev- 
ertheless, I say, there is in such worship a shade of 
hypocrisy, a practical deception ; for how often does 
the body appropriate what was meant for the cloth 
only ! Whoso would avoid falsehood, which is the 
essence of all sin, will perhaps see good to take a dif- 
ferent course. That reverence, which cannot act with- 
out obstruction and perversion when the Clothes are 
full, may have free course when they are empty. Even 
as, for Hindoo worshippers, the Pagoda is not less 
sacred than the God ; so do I, too, worship the hollow 
cloth garment with equal fervor as when it contained 
the man ; nay, with more, for I now fear no deception, 
of myself or of others. 

" Did not King Toomtabard, or, in other words, 
John Balliol, reign long over Scotland ; the man 
John Balliol being quite gone, and only the 4 Toom 
Tabard' (Empty Gown) remaining ? What still dig- 
nity dwells in a suit of cast clothes ! How meekly it 
bears its honors ! No haughty looks, no scornful 



OLD CLOTHES. 245 

gesture ; silent and serene, it fronts the world ; neither 
demanding worship, nor afraid to miss it. The hat 
still carries the physiognomy of its head; but the 
vanity and the stupidity, and goose-speech which was 
the sign of these two, are gone. The coat-arm is 
stretched out, but not to strike ; the breeches, in 
modest simplicity, depend at ease, and now, at last, 
have a graceful flow ; the waistcoat hides no evil pas- 
sion, no riotous desire ; hunger or thirst now dwells 
not in it. Thus all is purged from the grossness of 
sense, from the carking cares and foul vices of the 
world ; and rides there, on its Clothes-horse ; as on a 
Pegasus, might some skyey messenger, or purified 
apparition, visiting our low earth. 

" Often, while I sojourned in that monstrous tube- 
rosity of civilized life, the capital of England ; and 
meditated, and questioned Destiny, under that ink-sea 
of vapor, black, thick, and multifarious as Spartan 
broth ; and was one lone soul amid those grinding 
millions ; — often have I .turned into their Old-Clothes 
Market to worship. With awestruck heart I walk 
through that Monmouth Street, with its empty suits, 
as through a Sanhedrim of stainless ghosts. Silent 
are they, but expressive in their silence ; the past wit- 
nesses and instruments of wo and joy, of passions, 
virtues, crimes, and all the fathomless tumult of good 
and evil in ' the prison called Life.' Friends ! trust 
not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes are 
not venerable. Watch, too, with reverence, that 
bearded Jewish highpriest, who with hoarse voice, 
like some Angel of Doom, summons them from the 
four winds ! On his head, like the Pope, he has three 
hats, — a real triple triara. On either hand are the 

21* 



246 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

similitude of wings, whereon the summoned garments 
come to alight ; and ever, as he slowly cleaves the air, 
sounds forth his deep, fateful note, as if through a 
trumpet he were proclaiming: ' Ghosts of life, come to 
judgment.' Reck not, ye fluttering ghosts; he will 
purify you in his Purgatory, with fire and with water ; 
and one day, new-created ye shall reappear. Oh ! 
let him in whom the flame of devotion is ready to go 
out, who has never worshipped, and knows not what 
to worship, pace and repace, with austerest thought 
the pavement of Monmouth Street, and say whether 
his heart and his eyes still continue dry. If Field 
Lane, with its long fluttering rows of yellow hand- 
kerchiefs, be a Dionysius's Ear, where, in stifled, 
jarring hubbub, we hear the indictment which poverty 
and vice bring against lazy wealth, that it has left them 
there cast out and trodden under foot of want, dark- 
ness, and the Devil, — ■ then is Monmouth Street a 
Mirza's Hill, where, in motley vision, the whole 
pageant of existence passes awfully before us ; with its 
wail and jubilee, mad loves and mad hatreds, church- 
bells and gallows ropes, farce-tragedy, beast-godhood, 
—- the Bedlam of creation !" 

To most men, as it does to ourselves, all this will 
seem overcharged. We, too, have walked through 
Monmouth Street ; but with little feeling of " Devo- 
tion ;" probably in part because the contemplative 
process is so fatally broken in. upon by the brood of 
money-changers, who nestle in that Church, and im- 
portune the worshipper with merely secular proposals. 
Whereas Teufelsdrockh might be in that happy 
middle-state, which leaves to the clothes-broker no 



OLD CLOTHES. 247 

hope either of sale or of purchase, and so be allowed 
to linger theie without molestation. — Something we 
would have given to see the little philosophical figure, 
with its steeple-hat and loose-flowing skirts, and eyes 
in a fine frenzy, " pacing and repacing in austerest 
thought" that foolish street; which to him was a true 
Delphic avenue, and supernatural whispering-gallery, 
where the " Ghosts of Life" rounded strange secrets 
in his ear. O thou philosophic Teufelsdrockh, that 
listenest while others only gabble, and with thy quick 
tympanum hearest the grass grow ! 

At the same time, is it not strange that, in paper- 
bag documents, destined for an English work, there 
exists nothing like an authentic diary of this his 
sojourn in London; and of his meditations among the 
Clothes-shops, only the obscurest emblematic shadows ? 
Neither, in conversation (for, indeed, he was not a 
man to pester you with his travels), have we heard 
him more than allude to the subject. 

For the rest, however, it cannot be uninteresting 
that we here find how early the significanee of Clothes 
had dawned on the now so distinguished Clothes- 
Professor. Might we but fancy it to have been even 
in Monmouth Street, at the bottom of our own English 
" ink-sea," that this remarkable volume first took 
being, and shot forth its salient point in his soul, — as 
in Chaos did the egg of Eros, one day to be hatched 
into a universe ! 



248 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

CHAPTER VII. 

ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 

For us, who happen to live while the World-Phenix 
is burning herself, and burning so slowly that, as 
Teufelsdrockh calculates, it were a handsome bargain 
would she engage to have done " within two centu- 
ries," there seems to lie but an ashy prospect. Not 
altogether so, however, does the Professor figure it. 
"In the living subject," says he, "change is wont to 
be gradual. Thus, while the serpent sheds its old skin, 
the new is already formed beneath. Little knowest 
thou of the burning of a World-Phenix, who fanciest 
that she must first burn out, and lie as a dead cinere- 
ous heap ; and therefrom the young one start up by 
miracle, and fly heavenward. Far otherwise! In 
that fire-whirlwind, creation and destruction proceed 
together ; ever as the ashes of the old are blown about, 
do organic filaments of the new mysteriously spin 
themselves; and amid the rushing and the waving of 
the whirlwind-element, come tones of a melodious 
death-song, which end not but in tones of a more 
melodious birth-song. Nay, look into the fire-whirl- 
wind with thy own eyes, and thou wilt see." Let us 
actually look, then. To poor individuals, who cannot 
expect to live two centuries, those same organic fila- 
ments, mysteriously spinning themselves, will be the 
best part of the spectacle. First, therefore, this of 
mankind in general : 

"In vain thou deniest it," says the Professor; 
" thou art my brother. Thy very hatred, thy very 
envy, those foolish lies thou tellest of me in thy 



ORGAN F1LAMEMTS. 249 

splenetic humor ; what is all this but an inverted sym- 
pathy ? Were I a steam-engine, wouldst thou take the 
trouble to tell lies of me. Not thou ! I should grind 
all unheeded, whether badly or well. 

" Wondrous, truly, are the bonds that unite us one 
and all ; whether by the soft binding of love, or the 
iron chaining cf necessity, as we like to choose it. 
More than once, have I said to myself, of some per- 
haps whimsically strutting figure, such as provokes 
whimsical thoughts : ' Wert thou, my little brotherkin, 
suddenly covered up with even the largest imaginable 
glass-bell, — what a thing it were, not for thyself only, 
but for the world ! Post letters, more or fewer, from 
all the four winds, impinge against thy glass walls, 
but must drop unread. Neither from within comes 
there question or response into any post-bag; thy 
thoughts fall into no friendly ear or heart, thy manu- 
facture into no purchasing hand ; thou art no longer a 
circulating venous-arterial heart, that, taking and 
giving, circulatest through all space and all time. 
There has a hole fallen ^out in the immeasurable, 
universal world-tissue, which must be darned up 
again !' 

" Such venous-arterial circulation, of letters, verbal 
messages, paper and other packages, going out from 
him and coming in, is a blood-circulation, visible to 
the eye ; but the finer nervous circulation, by which 
all things, the minutest that he does, minutely influ- 
ence all men, and the very look of his face blesses or 
curses whomso it lights on, and so generates ever new 
blessing or new cursing ; all this you cannot see, but 
only imagine. I say, there is not a red Indian, hunt- 
ing by Lake Winnipeg, can quarrel with his squaw, but 



250 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

the whole world must smart for it: will not the price 
of beaver rise ? It is a mathematical fact, that the 
casting of this pebble from my hand alters the centre 
of gravity of the universe. 

"If now an existing generation of men stand so 
woven together, not less indissolubly does generation 
with generation. Hast thou ever meditated on that 
word, Tradition: how we inherit not life only, but all 
the garniture and form of life ; and work, and speak, 
and even think and feel, as our fathers, and primeval 
grandfathers, from the beginning, have given it us ? — 
Who printed thee, for example, this unpretending 
volume on the Philosophy of Clothes ? Not the Herren 
S till schwei gen and Company; but Cadmus of Thebes, 
Faust of Mentz, and innumerable others whom 
thou knowest not. Had there been no Maesogothic 
Ulfila, there had been no English Shakspeare, or a 
different one. Simpleton ! it was Tubalcain that made 
thy very tailor's needle, and sewed that court-suit of 
thine. 

" Yes, truly, if nature is one, and a living indivisi- 
ble whole, much more is mankind, the image that 
reflects and creates nature, without which nature were 
not. As palpable life-streams in that wondrous indi- 
vidual, mankind, among so many life-streams that are 
not palpable, flow on those main-currents of what we 
call opinion ; as preserved in institutions, polities, 
churches, above all in books. Beautiful it is to under- 
stand and know that a thought did never yet die ; 
that as thou, the originator thereof, hast gathered 
it and created it from the whole past, so thou wilt 
transmit it to the whole future. It is thus that the 
heroic heart, the seeing eye, of the first times, still 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 251 

feels and sees in us of the latest ; that the wise man 
stands ever encompassed, and spiritually embraced, by 
a cloud of witnesses and brothers ; and there is a living", 
literal Communion of Saints, wide as the world itself, 
and as the history of the world ! 

"Noteworthy also, and serviceable for the progress 
of this same individual, wilt thou find his subdivision 
into generations. Generations are as the days of toil- 
some mankind ; death and birth are the vesper and 
the matin bells, that summon mankind to sleep, and 
to rise refreshed for new advancement. "What the 
father has made, the son can make and enjoy ; but has 
also work of his own appointed him. Thus all things 
wax, and roll onwards ; arts, establishments, opinions, 
nothing is completed, but ever completing. Newton 
has learned to see what Kepler saw ; but there is also 
a fresh heaven-derived force in Newton. He must 
mount to still higher points of vision. So, too, the 
Hebrew Lawgiver is, in due time, followed by an 
Apostle of the Gentiles. In the business of destruc- 
tion, as this also is from time to time a necessary 
work, thou findest a like sequence and perseverance. 
For Luther it was as yet hot enough to stand by that 
burning of the Pope's Bull ; Voltaire could not warm 
himself at the glimmering ashes, but required quite 
other fuel. Thus likewise, I note, the English Whig 
has, in the second generation, become an English 
Radical; who, in the third again, it is to be hoped, 
will become an English Rebuilder. Find mankind 
where thou wilt, thou findest it in living movement, 
in progress faster or slower. The Phenix soars aloft, 
hovers with outstretched wings, filling earth with her 
music ; or, as now, she sinks, and with spheral swan- 



252 SARTOR RESARTtJS. 

song immolates herself in flame, that she may soar the 
higher and sing the clearer." 

Let the friends of social order, in such a disastrous 
period, lay this to heart, and derive from it any little 
comfort they can. We subjoin another passage, con- 
cerning titles : 

" Remark, not without surprise," says Teufels- 
drockh, " how all high titles of honour come hitherto 
from fighting. Your Herzog (Duke, Dux) is Leader 
of Armies; your Earl (Jarl) is Strong Man; your 
Marshal, Cavalry Horse-shoer. A millennium, or 
reign of peace and wisdom, having from of old been 
prophesied, and becoming now daily more and more 
indubitable, may it not be apprehended that such fight- 
ing-titles will cease to be palatable, and new and higher 
need to be devised ? 

" The only title wherein I, with confidence, trace 
Eternity, is that of King. Kbnig (King), anciently 
/forming, means Ken-ning (Cunning), or, which is the 
same thing, Can-ning. Ever must the Sovereign of 
Mankind be fitly entitled King." 

" Well, also," says he elsewhere, " was it written 
by theologians: a King rules by divine right. He 
carries in him an authority from God, or man will 
never give it him. Can I choose my own king? I 
can choose my own King Popinjay, and play what 
farce or tragedy I may with him ; but he who_is to be 
my ruler, whose will it is to be higher than my will , wa s 
chosen for me in heaven. Neither, except in such 
obedience to the Heaven-chosen, is freedom so much 
as conceivable." 

The Editor will here admit that, among all the won- 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 253 

drous provinces of Teufelsdrockh's spiritual world, 
there is none he walks in with such astonishment, 
hesitation, and even pain, as in the political. How, 
with our English love of Ministry and Opposition, and 
that generous conflict of parties, mind warming itself 
against mind in their mutual wrestle for the public 
good, by which wrestle, indeed, is our invaluable Con- 
stitution kept warm and alive ; how shall we domesti- 
cate ourselves in this spectral Necropolis, or rather 
city both of the dead and of the unborn, where the 
present seems little other than an inconsiderable film, 
dividing the past and the future ? In those dim long- 
drawn expanses, all is so immeasurable ; much so 
disastrous, ghastly ; your very radiances, and strag- 
gling light-beams, have a supernatural character. And 
then with such an indifference, such a prophetic peace- 
fulness (accounting the inevitably-coming as already 
here, to him all one whether it be distant by centuries 
or only by days), does he sit ; — and live, you would 
say, rather in any other age than in his own ! It is 
our painful duty to announce, or repeat, that, looking 
into this man, we discern a deep, silent, slow-burning 
inextinguishable radicalism, such as fills us with shud- 
dering admiration. 

Thus, for example, he appears to make little even 
of the elective franchise ; at least, so we interpret the 
following : " Satisfy yourselves," he says, " by universal, 
indubitable experiment, even as ye are now doing or 
will do, whether Freedom, heavenborn and leading 
heavenward, and so vitally essential for us all, cannot 
peradventure be mechanically hatched and brought to 
light in that same ballot-box of yours ; or, at worst, in 
some other discoverable or devisable box, edifice, or 

22 



254 SARTOR RESARTtTS. 

steam mechanism. It were a mighty convenience ; 
and beyond all feats of manufacture witnessed hitherto." 
Is Teufelsdrockh acquainted with the British Consti- 
tution, even slightly ? — He says, under another figure : 
"But after all, were the problem, as, indeed, it now 
everywhere is, to rebuild your old house from the top 
downwards (since you must live in it the while), what 
better, what other, than the representative machine 
will serve your turn ? Meanwhile, however, mock me 
not with the name of Free, ' when you have but knit 
up my chains into ornamental festoons.'" — Or what 
will any member of the Peace Society make of such an 
assertion as this? "The lower people everywhere 
desire war. Not so unwisely ; there is, then, a demand 
for lower people — to be shot!" 

Gladly, therefore, do we emerge from those soul- 
confusing labyrinths of speculative radicalism, into 
somewhat clearer regions. Here, looking round, as 
was our hest, for " Organic Filaments," we ask, May 
not this, touching " Hero-worship," be of the number ? 
It seems of a cheerful character ; yet so quaint, so mys- 
tical, one knows not what, or how little, may lie under 
it. Our readers shall look with their own eyes : 

" True is it that, in these days, man can do almost 
all things, only not obey. True, likewise, that whoso 
cannot obey cannot be free, still less bear rule ; he, 
that is the inferior of nothing, can be the superior of 
nothing, the equal of nothing. Nevertheless, believe 
not that man has lost his faculty of reverence ; that, if 
it slumber in him, it has gone dead. Painful for man 
is that same rebellious independence, when it has 
become inevitable ; only in loving companionship with 
his fellows does he feel safe ; only in reverently bow- 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 255 

ing down before the higher does he feel himself 
exalted. 

" Or what if the character of our so troublous era 
lay even in this : that man had forever cast away fear, 
which is the lower ; but not yet risen into perennial 
reverence, which is the higher and highest? 

" Meanwhile, observe with joy, so cunningly has 
Nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey 
he cannot but obey. Before no faintest revelation 
of the godlike did he ever stand irreverent; least of 
all, when the godlike showed itself revealed in his 
fellow-man. Thus is there a true religious loyalty for- 
ever rooted in his heart; nay, in all ages, even in ours, 
it manifests itself as a more or less orthodox Hero- 
tvorship. Tn which fact, that Hero-worship exists, 
has existed, and will forever exist, universally among 
mankind, mayest thou discern the corner-stone of living 
rock whereon all polities for the remotest time may 
stand secure." 

Do our readers discern any such corner-stone, or 
even so much as what Teufelsdrockh is looking at ? 
He exclaims: " Or hast thou forgotten Paris and Vol- 
taire ? How the aged, withered man, though but a 
skeptic mocker, and millinery court-poet, yet because 
even he seemed the wisest, best, could drag mankind 
at his chariot-wheels, so that princes coveted a smile 
from him, and the loveliest of France would have laid 
their hair beneath his feet! All Paris was one vast 
temple of Hero-worship ; though their Divinity, more- 
over, was of feature too apish. 

" But if such things," continues he, " were done in 
the dry tree, what will be done in the green ? If, in 
the most parched season of man's history, in the 



256 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

most parched spot of Europe, when Parisian life was, 
at best, but a scientific Hortus Siccus, bedizened with 
some Italian gumflowers, such virtue could come out 
of it ; what is it to be looked for when life again 
waves leafy and bloomy, and your hero-divinity shall 
have nothing apelike, but be wholly human ? Know 
that there is in man a quite indestructible reverence 
for whatsoever holds of heaven, or even plausibly 
counterfeits such holding. Show the dullest clodpole, 
show the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher 
than himself is actually here ; were his knees stiffened 
into brass, he must down and worship." 

Organic filaments, of a more authentic sort, myste- 
riously spinning themselves, some will perhaps disco- 
ver in the following passage : 

" There is no Church, sayest thou ? The voice of 
prophecy has gone dumb ? This is even what I dis- 
pute ; but, in any case, hast thou not still preaching 
enough ? A preaching friar settles himself in every 
village ; and builds a pulpit, which he calls Newspaper. 
Therefrom he preaches what most momentous doctrine 
is in him, for man's salvation ; and dost not thou 
listen, and believe ? Look well, thou seest everywhere 
a new clergy, of the Mendicant Orders, some bare- 
footed, some almost bare-backed, fashion itself into 
shape, and teach and preach, zealously enough, for 
copper alms and the love of God. These break in 
pieces the ancient idols ; and, though themselves too 
often reprobate, as idol-breakers are wont to be, mark 
out the sites of new churches, where the true God- 
ordained, that are to follow, may find audience, and 



ORGANIC FILAMENTS. 257 

minister. Said I not, before the old skin was shed, 
the new had formed itself beneath it ?" 

Perhaps, also, in the following- ; wherewith we now 
hasten to knit up this ravelled sleeve : 

" But there is no religion ?" reiterates the Profes- 
sor. " Fool ! I tell thee, there is. Hast thou well 
considered all that lies in this immeasurable froth- 
ocean we name Literature 1 Fragments of a genu- 
ine Chur ch-Homiletic lie scattered there, which time 
will assort ; nay, fractions even of a Liturgy could I 
point out. And knowest thou no prophet, even in 
the vesture, environment, and dialect of this age ? 
None to whom the godlike had revealed itself, through 
all meanest and highest forms of the common ; and 
by him been again prophetically revealed ; in whose 
inspired melody, even in these rag-gathering and rag- 
burning days, man's life again begins, were it but afar 
off, to be divine ? Knowest thou none such ? I know 
him, and name him— Goethe. 

"But thou as yet standest in no temple ; joinest in 
no psalm-worship ; feelest well that, where there is no 
ministering priest, the people perish 1 Be of comfort ! 
Thou art not alone, if thou have faith. Spake we not 
of a Communion of Saints, unseen, yet not unreal, 
accompanying and brotherlike embracing thee, so 
thou be worthy ? Their heroic sufferings rise up me- 
lodiously together to heaven, out of all lands, and out 
of all times, as a sacred Miserere; their heroic actions 
also, as a boundless, everlasting psalm of triumph. 
Neither say that thou hast now no symbol of the god- 
like. Is not God's universe a symbol of the godlike ; 
is not Immensity a temple ; is not man's history, and 

22* 



258 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

men's history, a perpetual Evangile ? Listen, and for 
organ-music thou wilt ever, as of old, hear the Morning 
Stars sing together." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 

It is in his stupendous section, headed Natural 
Supernaturalism, that the Professor first becomes a 
Seer ; and, after long effort, such as we have wit- 
nessed, finally subdues under his feet this refractory 
Clothes-Philosophy, and takes victorious possession 
thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to struggle 
with; ''Cloth-webs and Cob-webs," of imperial man- 
tles, superannuated symbols, and what not ; yet still 
did he courageously pierce through. Nay, worst of 
all, two quite mysterious world-embracing phantasms, 
Time and Space, have ever hovered round him, per- 
plexing and bewildering ; but with these also he now 
resolutely grapples, these also he victoriously rends 
asunder. In a word, he has looked fixedly on exist- 
ence, till, one after the other, its earthly hulls and 
garnitures have all melted away ; and now to his rapt 
vision, the interior, celestial Holy of Holies lies dis- 
closed. 

Here, therefore, properly it is that the Philosophy of 
Clothes attains to Transcendentalism. This last leap, 
can we but clear it, takes us safe into the Promised 
Land, where Palingenesia, in all senses, may be con- 
sidered as beginning. " Courage, then !" may our 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 259 

Diogenes exclaim, with better right than Diogenes the 
First once did. This stupendous section, we, after 
long, painful meditation, have found not to be unintel- 
ligible ; but, on the contrary, to grow clear, nay, radiant, 
and all-illuminating. Let the reader, turning on it what 
utmost force of speculative intellect is in him, do his 
part; as we, by judicious selection and adjustment, 
shall study to do ours. 

" Deep has been, and is, the significance of mira- 
cles," thus quietly begins the Professor; "far deeper, 
perhaps, than we imagine. Meanwhile, the question 
of questions were : What specially is a miracle ? To 
that Dutch King of Siam, an icicle had been a mira- 
cle ; whoso had carried with him an airpump, and 
phial of vitriolic ether, might have worked a miracle. 
To my horse, again, who unhappily is still more un- 
scientific, do not I work a miracle, and magical ' open 
sesame /' every time I please to pay twopence, and 
open for him an impassable Schlagbaum, or shut- 
turnpike ? 

" ' But is not a real miracle simply a violation of the 
laws of Nature V ask several. Whom I answer by this 
new question : What are the laws of Nature ? To me 
perhaps the rising of one from the dead were no viola- 
tion of these laws, but a confirmation ; were some far 
deeper law, now first penetrated into, and by spiritual 
force, even as the rest have all been, brought to bear on 
us with its material force. 

" Here, too, may some inquire, not without astonish- 
ment : On what ground shall one, that can make iron 
swim, come and declare that, therefore, he can teach 
religion ? To us, truly, of the nineteenth century, 
such declaration were inept enough ; which, neverthe- 



260 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

less, to our fathers, of the first century, was full of 
meaning. 

" ' But is it not the deepest law of Nature that she 
be constant ?' cries an illuminated class : ' Is not the 
machine of the universe fixed to move by unalterable 
rules ? * Probable enough, good friends ; nay, I too, 
must believe that the God, whom ancient, inspired men 
assert to be ' without variableness or shadow of turn- 
ing,' does, indeed, never change ; that Nature, that the 
universe, which no one, whom it so pleases, can be 
prevented from calling a machine, does move by the 
most unalterable rules. And now of you, too, I make 
the old inquiry : What those same unalterable rules, 
forming the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may 
possibly be I 

" They stand written in our works of science, say 
you; in the accumulated records of man's experi- 
ence? — Was man with his experience present at the 
creation, then, to see how it all went on ? Have any 
deepest scientific individuals yet dived down to the 
foundations of the universe, and gauged every thing 
there ? Did the Maker take them into his counsel ; 
that they read His ground-plan of the incomprehen- 
sible All; and can say : This stands marked therein, 
and no more than this I Alas, not in any wise ! These 
scientific individuals have been nowhere but where we 
also are ; have seen some handbreadths deeper than 
we see into the deep that is infinite, without bottom as 
without shore. 

" Laplace's book on the stars, wherein he exhibits 
that certain planets, with their satellites, gyrate round 
our worthy sun, at a rate and in a course, which, by 
greatest good fortune, he and the like of him have 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 261 

succeeded in detecting, — is to me as precious as to 
another. But is this what thou namest ' Mechanism 
of the Heavens,' and ' System of the World ;' this, 
wherein Sirius and the Pleiades, and all Herschel's 
fifteen thousand suns per minute, being left out, some 
paltry handful of moons, and inert balls, had been — 
looked at, nicknamed, and marked in the Zodiacal 
Waybill ; so that we can now prate of their Wherea- 
bout ; their How, their Why, their What, being hid 
from us, as in the signless Inane ? 

" System of Nature! To the wisest man, wide as 
is his vision, Nature remains of quite infinite depth, of 
quite infinite expansion; and all experience thereof 
limits itself to some few computed centuries, and meas- 
ured square-miles. The course of Nature's phases, 
on this our little fraction of a planet, is partially 
known to us ; but who knows what deeper courses 
these depend on ; what infinitely larger cycle (of 
causes) our little epicycle revolves on ? To the min- 
now every cranny and pebble, and quality and accident, 
of its little native creek may have become familiar; 
but does the minnow understand the ocean-tides and 
periodic currents, the trade-winds, and monsoons, and 
moon's eclipses ; by all which the condition of its little 
creek is regulated, and may, from time to time (un- 
miraculously enough), be quite overset and reversed ? 
Such a minnow is man ; his creek, this planet earth ; 
his ocean, the immeasurable All ; his monsoons and 
periodic currents the mysterious course of Providence 
through iEons of iEons. 

" We speak of the volume of Nature ; and truly a 
volume it is, — . whose author and writer is God. To 
read it ! Dost thou, does man, so much as well know 
the alphabet thereof? With its words, sentences, and 



262 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

grand descriptive pages, poetical and philosophical, 
spread out through solar systems, and thousands of 
years, we shall not try thee. It is a volume written 
in celestial hieroglyphs, in the true sacred-writing ; 
of which even prophets are happy that they can read 
here a line and there a line. As for your Institutes, and 
Academies of Science, they strive bravely; and, from 
amid the thick-crowded, inextricably intertwisted hie- 
roglyphic writing, pick out, by dexterous combination, 
some letters in the vulgar character, and therefrom put 
together this and the other economic recipe, of high 
avail in practice. That Nature is more than some 
boundless volume of such recipes, or huge, well-nigh 
inexhaustible domestic-cookery-book, of which the 
whole secret will, in this wise, one day, evolve itself, 
the fewest dream. 

" Custom," continues the Professor, " doth make 
dotards of us all. Consider well, thou wilt find that 
custom is the greatest of weavers ? and weaves air- 
raiment for all the spirits of the universe ; whereby, 
indeed, these dwell with us visibly, as ministering 
servants, in our houses and workshops ; but their 
spiritual nature becomes, to the most, forever hidden. 
Philosophy complains that custom has hoodwinked 
us, from the first ; that we do every thing by custom, 
even believe by it ; that our very axioms, let us boast 
of free-thinking as we may, are oftenest simply such 
beliefs as we have never heard questioned. Nay, 
what is philosophy throughout but a continual battle 
against custom ; an ever-renewed effort to transcend 
the sphere of blind custom, and so become tran- 
scendental ? 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 263 

"Innumerable are the illusions and legerdemain 
tricks of custom ; but of all these perhaps the clev- 
erest is her nack of persuading us that the miracu- 
lous, by simple repetition, ceases to be miraculous. 
True, it is by this means we live ; for man must work, 
as well as wonder ; and herein is custom so far a 
kind nurse, guiding him to his true benefit. But she 
is a fond, foolish nurse, or rather we are false, foolish 
nurslings, when, in our resting and reflecting hours, 
we prolong the same deception. Am I to view the 
stupendous with stupid indifference, because I have 
seen it twice, or two hundred, 01 two million times ? 
There is no reason in nature or in art why I should ; 
unless, indeed, I am a mere work-machine, for whom 
the divine gift of thought were no other than the ter- 
restrial gift of steam is to the steam-engine ; a power 
whereby cotton might be spun, and money and money's 
worth realized. 

" Notable enough, too, here as elsewhere, wilt thou 
find the potency of names; which, indeed, are but 
one kind of such custom-woven, wonder-hiding gar- 
ments. Witchcraft, and all manner of spectre-work, 
and demonology, we have now named madness, and 
diseases of the nerves. Seldom reflecting that still 
the new question comes upon us : What is madness, 
what are nerves ? Ever, as before, does madness re- 
main a mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boiling 
up of the nether chaotic deep, through this fair-painted 
vision of creation, which swims thereon, which we 
name the Eeal. Was Luther's picture of the Devil 
less a reality, whether it were formed within the 
bodily eye, or without it ? In every the wisest soul 
lies a whole world of internal madness, an authentic 



264 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Demon-empire ; out of which, indeed, his world of 
wisdom has been creatively built together, and now 
rests there, as on its dark foundations does a habitable 
flowery earth-rind. 

" But deepest of all illusory appearances, for hiding 
wonder, as for many other ends, are your two grand, 
fundamental, world-enveloping appearances, Space and 
Time. These, as spun and woven for us from before 
birth itself, to clothe our celestial Me for dwelling here, 
and yet to blind it, — lie all-embracing, as the universal 
canvass, or warp and woof, whereby all minor illusions, 
in this phantasm existence, weave and paint themselves. 
In vain, while here on earth, shall you endeavour to 
strip them oft*: you can, at best, but rend them asunder 
for moments, and look through. 

" Fortunatus had a wishing-hat, which when he put 
on, and wished himself anywhere, behold he was 
there. By this means had Fortunatus triumphed over 
space, Jtie had annihilated space ; for him there was 
no Where, but all was Here. Were a hatter to estab- 
lish himself in the Wahngasse of Weissnichtwo, and 
make felts of this sort for all mankind, what a world 
we should have of it ! Still stranger, should, on the 
opposite side of the street, another hatter establish 
himself; and, as his fellow-craftsman made space- 
annihilating hats, make time-annihilating! Of both 
would. I purchase, were it with my last groschen ; but 
chiefly of this latter. To clap on your felt, and, 
simply by wishing that you were Anywhere, straight- 
way to be there ! Next to clap on your other felt, 
and, simply by wishing that you were anywhen, 
straightway to be then.' This were, indeed, the 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 265 

grander ; shooting at will from the fire-creation of the 
world to its fire-consummation ; here historically pre- 
sent in the first century, conversing face to face with 
Paul and Seneca; there prophetically in the thirty- 
first, conversing also face to face with other Pauls and 
Senecas, who as yet stand hidden in the depth of that 
late time ! 

" Or thinkest thou it were impossible, unimagina- 
ble ? Is the Past annihilated, then, or only past? Is 
the Future non-extant, or only future ? Those mystic 
faculties of thine, memory and hope, already answer ; 
already through those mystic avenues, thou the earth- 
blinded summonest both Past and Future* and com- 
munest with them, though as yet dai - y, and with mute 
beckonings. The curtains of yesterday drop down, 
the curtains of to-morrow roll up ; but yesterday and 
to-morrow both are. Pierce through the Time-element, 
glance into the Eternal. Believe what thou findest 
written in the sanctuaries of man's soul, even as all 
thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it there : that 
time and space are not God, but creations of God ; 
that with God as it is a universal Here, so is it an 
everlasting Now. 

" And seest thou therein any glimpse of Immor- 
tality?— O Heaven! Is the white tomb of our 
loved one, who died from our arms, and must be left 
behind us there, which lises in the distance, like a 
pale, mournfully receding milestone, to tell how many 
toilsome, uncheered miles we have journeyed on alone, 
—but a pale, spectral illusion ? Is the lost friend still 
mysteriously here, even as we are here mysteriously, 
with God? — Know of a truth that only the time- 
shadows have perished, or are perishable ; that the 

23 



266 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

real being of whatever was, and whatever is, and 
whatever will be, is even now and forever. This, 
should it unhappily seem new, thou mayest ponder, 
at thy leisure, for the next twenty years, or the next 
twenty centuries. Believe it thou must ; understand it 
thou canst not. 

"That the thought-forms, space and time, wherein, 
once for all, we are sent into this earth to live, should 
condition and determine our whole practical reason- 
ings, conceptions, and imagings (not imaginings), — 
seems altogether fit, just, and unavoidable. But that 
they should, farthermore, usurp such sway over pure 
spiritual meditation, and blind us to the wonder every- 
where lying close on us, seems nowise so. Admit 
space and time to their due rank as forms of thought ; 
nay, even, if thou wilt, to their quite undue rank of 
realities ; and consider, then, with thyself, how their 
thin disguises hide from us the brightest God-effulgen- 
ces ! Thus, were it not miraculous, could I stretch 
forth my hand, and clutch the sun ? Yet thou seest 
me daily stretch forth my hand, and therewith clutch 
many a thing, and swing it hither and thither. Art 
thou a grown baby, then, to fancy that the miracle lies 
in miles of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of 
weight ; and not to see that the true, inexplicable, God- 
revealing miracle lies in this, that I can stretch forth 
my hand at all ; that I have free force to clutch aught 
therewith ? Innumerable other of this sort are the de- 
ceptions, and wonder-hiding stupefactions, which space 
practises on us. 

" Still worse is it with regard to time. Your grand 
anti-magician, and universal wonder-hider, is this 
same lying time. Had we but the time-annihilating 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 267 

hat, to put on for once only, we should see ourselves 
in a world of miracles, wherein all fabled or authentic 
thaumaturgy and feats of magic were outdone. But 
unhappily we have not such a hat ; and man, poor fool 
that he is, can seldom and scantily help himself with- 
out one. 

" Were it not wonderful, for instance, had Orpheus 
built the walls of Thebes by the mere sound of his 
lyre ? Yet tell me, who built these walls of Weiss- 
nichtwo ; summoning out all the sandstone rocks, to 
dance along from the Steinbruch (now a huge Trog- 
lodyte chasm, with frightful, green-mantled pools), 
and shape themselves into Doric and Ionic pillars, 
squared ashlar houses, and noble streets ? Was it 
not the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, who, in 
past centuries, by the divine music of wisdom, suc- 
ceeded in civilizing man ? Our highest Orpheus 
walked in Judea, eighteen hundred years ago. His 
sphere-melody, flowing in wild native tones, took cap- 
tive the ravished souls of men ; and, being, of a truth, 
sphere-melody, still flows and sounds, though now 
with thousandfold accompaniments, and rich sympho- 
nies through all our hearts ; and modulates, and 
divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, which happens 
in two hours ; and does it cease to be wonderful, if 
happening in two million ? Not only was Thebes built 
by the music of an Orpheus ; but without the music of 
some inspired Orpheus was no city ever built, no work 
that man glories in ever done. 

" Sweep away the illusion of time ; glance, if thou 
have eyes, from the near moving cause to its far 
distant mover. The stroke that came transmitted 
through a whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a 



268 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

stroke than if the last ball only had been struck, and 
sent flying? Oh, could I (with the time-annihilating 
hat) transport thee direct from the beginnings to the 
endings, how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy 
heart set flaming in the light-sea of celestial wonder ! 
Then sawest thou that this fair universe, were it in the 
meanest province thereof, is in very deed the Slar- 
domed City of God ; that through every star, through 
every grass-blade, and most through every living soul, 
the glory of a present God still beams. But Nature, 
which is the time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to 
the wise, hides Him from the foolish. 

" Again, could anything be more miraculous than 
an actual, authentic ghost ? The English Johnson 
longed, all his life, to see one ; but could not, though 
he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church- 
vaults and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor ! Did 
he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the 
body's, look round him into that full tide of human 
life he so loved ; did he never so much as look into 
himself? The good Doctor was a ghost, as actual 
and authentic as heart could wish ; well nigh a million 
of ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. 
Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of time ; 
compress the three-score years into three minutes. 
What else was he, what else are we ? Are we not 
spirits, shaped into a body, into an appearance ; and 
that fade away again into air, and invisibility? This 
is no metaphor, it is a simple scientific/tfc^. We start 
out of nothingness, take figure, and are apparitions. 
Round us, as round the veriest spectre, is eternity ; 
and to eternity minutes are as years and aeons. Come 
there not tones of love and faith, as from celestial 



NATURAL SUPERNATURALISM. 269 

harp-strings, like the song of beatified souls ? And 
again, do we not squeak and gibber (in our discor- 
dant screech-owlish debatings and recriminatings) ; 
and glide bodeful, and feeble, and fearful; or uproar 
(poltern), and revel in our mad dance of the dead, — 
till the scent of the morning-air summons us to our 
still home ; and dreamy night becomes awake and 
day ? Where now is Alexander of Macedon ; does 
the steel host, that yelled in fierce battle-shouts at 
Issus and Arbela, remain behind him; or have they 
all vanished utterly, even as perturbed goblins must? 
Napoleon, too, and his Moscow retreats, and Austerlitz 
campaigns ! Was it all other than the veriest spectre- 
hunt; which has now, with its howling tumult that 
made night hideous, flitted away ? — Ghosts ! There 
are nigh a thousand million walking the earth openly 
at noontide ; some half-hundred have vanished from 
it, some half-hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch 
ticks once. 

" O Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful to consider 
that we not only carry each a future ghost within him ; 
but are, in very deed, ghosts ! These limbs, whence 
had we them ; this stormy force ; this life-blood with 
its burning passion? They are dust and shadow; a 
shadow-system gathered round our Me ; wherein, 
through some moments or years, the Divine Essence 
is to be revealed in the flesh. That warrior on his 
strong war-horse, fire flashes Through his eyes ; force 
dwells in his arm and heart ; but warrior and war- 
horse are a vision ; a revealed force, nothing more. 
Stately they tread the earth, as if it were a firm sub- 
stance. Fool ! the earth is but a film ; it cracks in. 
twain, and warrior and war-horse sink beyond plum- 

23* 



270 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

met's sounding. Plummet's? Fantasy herself will 
not follow them. A little while ago they were not ; a 
little while and they are not, their very ashes are not. 
" So has it been from the beginning, so will it be to 
the end. Generation after generation takes to itself 
the form of a body ; and forth issuing from Cimmerian 
night, on Heaven's mission, appears. What force 
and fire is in each he expends. One grinding in the 
mill of industry; one hunter-like climbing the giddy 
Alpine heights of science ; one madly dashed in 
pieces on the rocks of strife, in war with his fellow ; — 
and then the heaven-sent is recalled ; his earthly 
vesture falls away, and soon even to sense becomes a 
vanished shadow. Thus, like some wild-flaming, wild- 
thundering train of Heaven's artillery, does this 
mysterious Mankind thunder and flame, in long- 
drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, through the un- 
known deep. Thus, like a God-created, fire-breathing 
spirit-host, we emerge from the Inane; haste storm- 
fully across the astonished earth ; then plunge again 
into the Inane. Earth's mountains are levelled, and 
her seas filled up, in our passage. Can the earth, which 
is but dead and a vision, resist spirits which have 
reality, and are alive ? On the hardest adamant some 
foot-print of us is stamped in; the last rear of the host 
will read traces of the earliest van. But whence ? — 
O Heaven, whither? Sense knows not; faith knows 
not; only that it is through mystery to mystery, from 
God and to God. 

'We are such stuff 
As dreams are made of, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep !' " 



CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 271 

CHAPTER IX. 

CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 

Here, then, arises the so momentous question ; 
Have many British readers actually arrived with us 
at the new promised country ; is the Philosophy of 
Clothes now at last opening around them ? Long and 
adventurous has the journey been ; from those out- 
most, vulgar, palpable woollen hulls of man; through 
his wondrous flesh-garments, and his wondrous 
social garnitures ; inwards to the garments of his very 
soul's soul, to time and space themselves ! And now 
does the spiritual, eternal essence of man, and of 
mankind, bared of such wrappages, begin in any 
measure to reveal itself? Can many readers discern, 
as through a glass darkly, in huge, wavering outlines, 
some primeval rudiments of man's being, what is 
changeable divided from what is unchangeable ? Does 
that Earth-Spirit's speech in Faust: 

" 'T is thus at the roaring loom of time I ply, 
And weave for God the garment thou see'st him by ;" 

or that other thousand-times-repeated speech of the 
magician, Shakspeare: 

" And like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloudcapt towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
And all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
And like this unsubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a wrack behind ;" «*. 

begin to have some meaning for us ! In a word, do 
we at length stand safe in the far region of Poetic 
Creation and Palingenesia, where that Phenix Death- 



272 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

birth of human society, and of all human things, ap- 
pears possible, is seen to be inevitable ? 

Along this most insufficient, unheard-of bridge, 
which the Editor, by Heaven's blessing, has now seen 
himself enabled to conclude, if not complete, it can- 
not be his sober calculation, but only his fond hope, 
that many have travelled without accident. No firm 
arch, overspanning the impassable with paved high- 
way, could the Editor construct ; only, as was said, 
some zigzag series of rafts floating tumultuously 
thereon. Alas, and the leaps from raft to raft were 
too often of a breakneck character ; the darkness, the 
nature of the element, all was against us ! 

Nevertheless, may not here and there one of a 
thousand, provided with a discursiveness of intellect 
rare in our day, have cleared the passage, in spite of 
all ? Happy few, little band of friends, be welcome, 
be of courage ! By degrees the eye grows accus- 
tomed to its new Whereabout; the hand can stretch 
itself forth to work there. It is in this grand and, 
indeed, highest work of Palingenesia, that ye shall 
labor, each according to ability. New laborers will 
arrive, new bridges will be built ; nay, may not our 
own poor rope-and-raft bridge, in your passings and 
repassings, be mended in many a point, till it grow 
quite firm, passable even for the halt ? 

Meanwhile, of the innumerable multitude that 
started with us, joyous and full of hope, where now 
is the innumerable remainder, whom we see no longer 
by our side ? The most have recoiled, and stand 
gazing afar off, in unsympathetic astonishment at our 
career. Not a few, pressing forward with more 
courage, have missed footing, or leaped short ; and 



CIRCUMSPECTIVE. 



273 



now swim weltering in the chaos-flood, some towards 
this shore, some towards that. To these also a help- 
ing hand should be held out ; at least some word of 
encouragement be said. 

Or, to speak without metaphor, with which mode 
of utterance Teufelsdrockh unhappily has somewhat 
infected us, — can it be hidden from the Editor that 
many a British reader sits reading quite bewildered in 
head, and afflicted rather than instructed by the present 
work ? Yes, long ago has many a British reader 
been, as now, demanding, with something like a snarl : 
Whereto does all this lead ; or what use is in it? 

In the way of replenishing thy purse, or otherwise 
aiding thy digestive faculty, O British reader, it leads 
to nothing, and there is no use in it ; but rather the 
reverse, for it costs thee somewhat. Nevertheless, 
if through this unpromising Horn-gate, Teufelsdrockh, 
and we, by means of him, have led thee into the true 
land of dreams ; and through the Clothes-screen, as 
through a magical Pierre- Pertuis, thou lookest, even 
for moments, into the region of the wonderful, and 
seest and feelest that thy daily life is girt with wonder, 
and based on wonder, and thy very blankets and 
breeches are miracles, — then art thou profited beyond 
money's worth, and hast a thankfulness towards our 
Professor ; nay, perhaps in. many a literary tea-circle, 
wilt open thy kind lips, and audibly express that same. 

Nay, farther, art not thou, too, perhaps, by this time, 
made aware that all symbols are properly Clothes ; that 
all forms, whereby spirit manifests itself to sense, 
whether outwardly or in the imagination, are Clothes ; 
and thus, not only the parchment Magna Charta, which 
a tailor was nigh cutting into measures, but the pomp 



274 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

and authority of law, the sacredness of majesty, and 
all inferior worships (worth-ships) are properly a ves- 
ture and raiment ; and the Thirty-nine Articles them- 
selves are articles of wearing apparel (for the religious 
idea) ? In which case, must it not also be admitted 
that this science of Clothes is a high one, and may 
with infinitely deeper study on thy part, yield richer 
fruit ; that it takes scientific rank beside Codification, 
and Political Economy, and the Theory of the British 
Constitution ; nay, rather from its prophetic height 
looks down on all these, as on so many weaving-shops 
and spinning-mills, where the vestures, which it has to 
fashion, and consecrate, and distribute, are, too often, 
by haggard, hungry operatives, who see no farther than 
their nose, mechanically woven and spun ? 

But omitting all this, much more all that concerns 
Natural Supernaturalism, and, indeed, whatever has 
reference to the ulterior or transcendental portion of 
the science, or bears never so remotely on that pro- 
mised volume of the Palingenesie der menschlichen 
Gesellschaft (New-birth of Society), — we humbly sug- 
gest that no province of Clothes-Philosophy, even the 
lowest, is without its direct value, but that innumer- 
able inferences of a practical nature may be drawn 
therefrom. To say nothing of those pregnant consid- 
erations, ethical, political, symbolical, which crowd on 
the Clothes-Philosopher from the very threshold of his 
science ; nothing even of those " architectural ideas" 
which, as we have seen, lurk at the bottom of all 
modes, and will one day, better unfolding themselves, 
lead to important revolutions, — let us glance, for a 
moment, and with the faintest light of Clothes-Philo- 
sophy, on what may be called the Habilitory class of 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 275 

our fellow-men. Here, too, overlooking, where so much 
were to be looked on, the million spinners, weavers, 
fullers, dyers, washers, and wringers, that puddle and 
muddle in their dark recesses, to make us Clothes, and 
die that we may live, — let us but turn the reader's 
attention upon two small divisions of mankind, who, 
like moths, may be regarded as Cloth-animals, crea- 
tures that live, move, and have their being in Cloth ; 
we mean Dandies and Tailors. 

In regard to both which small divisions it may be 
asserted without scruple that the public feeling, unen- 
lightened by philosophy, is at fault ; and even that the 
dictates of humanity are violated. As will, perhaps, 
abundantly appear to readers of the two following 
chapters. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE DANDIACAL BODY. 

First, touching Dandies, let us consider, with some 
scientific strictness, what a Dandy specially is. A 
Dandy is a Clothes-wearing man ; a man whose trade, 
office, and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. 
Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is 
heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing 
of Clothes wisely and well ; so that as others dress to 
live, he lives to dress. The all-importance of Clothes, 
which a German Professor of unequalled learning and 
acumen, writes his enormous volume to demonstrate, 
has sprung up in the intellect of the Dandy, without 



276 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

effort, like an instinct of genius. He is inspired with 
Cloth, a Poet of Cloth. What Teufelsdrockh would 
call a "Divine Idea of Cloth" is born with him; and 
this, like other such ideas, will express itself out- 
wardly, or wring his heart asunder with unutterable 
throes. 

But like a generous, creative enthusiast, he fear- 
lessly makes his idea an action ; shows himself, in 
peculiar guise, to mankind ; walks forth, a witness 
and living martyr to the eternal worth of Clothes. 
We called him a Poet ; is not his body the (stuffed) 
parchment-skin whereon he writes, with cunning Hud- 
dersfield dyes, a sonnet to his mistress' eyebrow ? 
Say, rather, an Epos, and Clotha Virumque cano, to 
the whole world, in Macaronic verses, which he that 
runs may read. Nay, if you grant, what seems to be 
admissible, that the Dandy has a thinking-principle in 
him, and some notions of time and space, is there not 
in this life-devotedness to Cloth, in this so willing 
sacrifice of the immortal to the perishable, something 
(though in reverse order) of that blending and identifi- 
cation of Eternity with Time, which, as we have seen, 
constitutes the prophetic character? 

And now, for all this perennial martyrdom, and 
poesy, and even prophecy, what is it that the Dandy 
asks in return ? Solely, we may say, that you woukj 
recognise the existence ; would admit him to be a 
living object; or even failing this, a visual object or 
thing that will reflect rays of light. Your silver or 
your gold (beyond what the niggardly law has already 
secured him) he solicits not; simply the glance of 
your eyes. Understand his mystic significance, or 
altogether miss and misinterpret it; do but look at him. 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 277 

and he is contented. May we not well cry, Shame on 
an ungrateful world, that refuses even this poor boon ; 
that will waste its optic faculty on dried crocodiles, 
and Siamese Twins ; and over the domestic, wonderful 
wonder of wonders, a live Dandy, glance with hasty 
indifference, and a scarcely concealed contempt ? 
Him no zoologist classes among the Mammalia, no 
anatomist dissects with care. When did we see any 
injected preparation of the Dandy, in our museums; 
any specimen of him preserved in spirits ? Lord Her- 
ringbone may dress himself in a snuff-brown suit, with 
snuff-brown shirt and shoes. It skills not ; the undis- 
cerning public, occupied with grosser wants, passes by 
regardless on the other side. 

The age of curiosity, like that of chivalry, is, indeed, 
properly speaking, gone. Yet perhaps only gone to 
sleep; for here arises the Clothes-Philosophy to resus- 
citate, strangely enough, both the one and the other ! 
Should sound views of this science come to prevail, the 
essential nature of the British Dandy, and the mystic 
significance that lies in him, cannot always remain hid- 
den under laughable and lamentable hallucination. The 
following long extract from Professor Teufelsdrb'ckh 
may set the matter, if not in its true light, yet in the 
way towards such. It is to be regretted, however, 
that here, as so often elsewhere, the Professor's keen, 
philosophic perspicacity is somewhat marred by a cer- 
tain mixture of almost owlish purblindness, or else of 
some perverse, ineffectual, ironic tendency ; our readers 
shall judge which : 

"In these distracted times," writes he, "when the 
Religious Principle, driven out of most churches, 
either lies unseen in the hearts of good men, looking 

24 



278 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

and longing and silently working there towards some 
new revelation ; or else wanders homeless over the 
world, like a disembodied soul seeking its terrestrial 
organization, — into how many strange shapes, of 
superstition and fanaticism, does it not tentatively and 
errantly cast itself! The higher enthusiasm of man's 
nature is, for the while, without exponent; yet must it 
continue indestructible, unweariedly active, and work 
blindly in the great chaotic deep. Thus sect after sect, 
and church after church, bodies itself forth, and melts 
again into new metamorphosis. 

" Chiefly is this observable in England, which, as 
the wealthiest and worst-instructed of European nations, 
offers precisely the elements (of heat, namely, and of 
darkness) in which such moon-calves and monstrosities 
are best generated. Among the newer sects of that 
country, one of the most notable, and closely connected 
with our present subject, is that of the Dandies ; con- 
cerning which, what little information I have been able 
to procure may fitly stand here. 

" It is true, certain of the English Journalists, men 
generally without sense for the Religious Principle, or 
judgment for its manifestations, speak, in their brief 
enigmatic notices, as if this were perhaps rather a 
secular sect, and not a religious one ; nevertheless, to 
the psychologic eye its devotional and even sacrificial 
character plainly enough reveals itself. Whether it 
belongs to the class of Fetish-worships, or of Hero- 
worships or Polytheisms, or to what other class, may 
in the present state of our intelligence remain undecided 
(schweben). A certain touch of Manicheism, not, 
indeed, in the Gnostic shape, is discernible enough; 
also (for human error walks in a cycle, and reappears 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 279 

at intervals) a not inconsiderable resemblance to that 
superstition of the Athos monks, who, by fasting from 
all nourishment, and looking intensely for a length of 
time into their own navels, came to discern therein 
the true Apocalypse of Nature, and Heaven Unveiled. 
To my own surmise, it appears as if this Dandiacal 
sect were but a new modification, adapted to the new 
time, of that primeval superstition, Self-Worship ; 
which Zerdusht, Quangfoutchee, Mohammed, and 
others, strove rather to subordinate^ and restrain than 
to eradicate; and which only in the purer forms of 
religion has been altogether rejected. Wherefore, if 
any one chooses to name it revived Ahrimanism, or a 
new figure of Demon-Worship, I have, so far as is yet 
visible, no objection. 

" For the rest, these people, animated with the zeal 
of a new sect, display courage and perseverance, and 
what force there is in man's nature though never so 
enslaved. They affect great purity and separatism; 
distinguish themselves by a particular costume (where- 
of some notices were given in the earlier part of this 
volume); likewise, so far as possible, by a particular 
speech (apparently some broken Lingua-franca, or 
English-French); and, on the whole, strive to main- 
tain a true Nazarene deportment, and keep themselves 
unspotted from the world. 

" They have their temples, whereof the chief, as 
the Jewish Temple did, stands in their metropolis; 
and is named jllmacks, a word of uncertain etymology. 
They worship principally by night; and have their 
highpriests and highpriestesses, who, however, do not 
continue for life. The rites, by some supposed to be 
of the Menadic sort, or perhaps with an Eleusinian or 



280 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Cabiric character, are held strictly secret. Nor are 
sacred books wanting to the sect ; these they call 
Fashionable Novels. However, the Canon is not com- 
pleted, and some are canonical and others not. 

" Of such sacred books I, not without expense, 
procured myself some samples ; and in hope of true 
insight, and with the zeal which beseems an inquirer 
into Clothes, set to interpret and study them. But 
wholly to no purpose. That tough faculty of reading, 
for which the world will not refuse me credit, was 
here for the first time foiled and set at nought. In 
vain that I summoned my whole energies (inich weid- 
lich anstrengte), and did my very utmost. At the end 
of some short space, I was uniformly seized with not 
so much what I can call a drumming in my ears, as a 
kind of infinite, unsufTerable Jew's-harping and scran- 
nel-piping there ; to which the frightfullest species of 
magnetic sleep soon supervened. And if I strove to 
shake this away, and absolutely would not yield, came 
a hitherto unfelt sensation, as of delirium tremens, and 
a melting into total deliquium ; — till at last, by order 
of the doctor, dreading ruin to my whole intellectual 
and bodily faculties, and a general breaking up of 
the constitution, I reluctantly but determinedly fore- 
bore. Was there some miracle at work here ; like 
those fire-balls, and supernal and infernal prodigies, 
that in the case of the Jewish Mysteries, have also 
more than once scared back the Alien ? Be this as it 
may, such failure on my part, after best efforts, must 
excuse the imperfection of this sketch ; altogether 
incomplete, yet the completest I could give of a sect 
too singular to be omitted. 

" Loving my own life and senses as I do, no power 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 281 

shall induce me, as a private individual, to open 
another Fashionable Novel. But luckily, in this 
dilemma, comes a hand from the clouds ; whereby 
if not victory, deliverance is held out to me. Round 
one of those book-packages, which the Stillschwei- 
gen'sche Buchhandlung is in the habit of importing 
from England, come, as is usual, various waste printed 
sheets (macalatur-blater), by way of interior wrap- 
page. Into these the Clothes-Philosopher, with a 
certain Mohammedan reverence even for waste paper, 
where curious knowledge will sometimes hover, dis- 
dains not to cast his eye. Readers may judge of his 
astonishment when on such a defaced stray sheet, 
probably the outcast fraction of some English Periodi- 
cal, such as they name Magazine, appears something 
like a dissertation on this very subject of Fashionable 
Novels I It sets out, indeed, chiefly from the secular 
point of view ; directing itself, not without asperity, 
against some to me unknown individual, named Pel- 
ham, who seems to be a mystagogue, and leading 
teacher and preacher of the sect ; so that, what indeed 
otherwise was not to he expected in such a fugitive, 
fragmentary sheet, the true secret, the religious physi- 
ognomy and physiology of the Dandiacal body, is 
nowise laid fully open there. Nevertheless, scattered 
lights do from time to time sparkle out, whereby I 
have endeavoured to profit. Nay, in one passage 
selected from the prophecies, or Mythic Theogonies, 
or whatever they are (for the style seems very mixed), 
of this mystagogue, I find what appears to be a Con- 
fession of Faith, or Whole Duty of Man, according 
to the tenets of that sect. Which confession, or 
whole duty, therefore, as proceeding from a source 

24* 



282 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

so authentic, I shall here arrange under seven distinct 
articles, and in very abridged shape lay before the 
German world ; therewith taking leave of this matter. 
Observe, also, that to avoid possibility of error, I, as 
far as may be, quote literally from the original : 

" ' Articles of Faith. 

' 1. Coats should have nothing of the triangle about 
them ; at the same time, wrinkles behind should be 
carefully avoided. 

' 2. The collar is a very important point ; it should 
be low behind, and slightly rolled. 

' 3. No license of fashion can allow a man of deli- 
cate taste to adopt the posterior luxuriance of a 
Hottentot. 

' 4. There is safety in a swallow-tail. 

' 5. The good sense of a gentleman is nowhere more 
finely developed than in his rings. 

' 6. It is permitted to mankind, under certain restric- 
tions, to wear white waistcoats. 

' 7. The trowsers must be exceedingly tight across 
the hips.' 

" All which propositions, I, for the present, content 
myself with modestly, but peremptorily and irrevocably, 
denying." 

" In strange contrast with this Dandiacal body 
stands another British sect, originally, as I understand, 
of Ireland, where its chief seat still is ; but known 
also in the main island, and, indeed, everywhere rapid- 
ly spreading. As this sect has hitherto emitted no 
canonical books, it remains to me in the same state of 
obscurity as the Dandiacal, which has published books 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 283 

that the unassisted human faculties are inadequate to 
read. The members appear to be designated by a 
considerable diversity of names, according to their 
various places of establishment. In England they are 
generally called the Drudge sect ; also, unphilosophi- 
cally enough, the White Negroes ; and, chiefly in scorn 
by those of other communions, the Ragged-Beggar 
sect. In Scotland, again, I find them entitled Hallan- 
shakers, or the Stook-of-Duds sect ; any individual 
communicant is named Stook-of-Duds (that is, Shock 
of Rags), in allusion, doubtless, to their professional 
costume. While in Ireland, which, as mentioned, is 
their grand parent hive, they go by a perplexing multi- 
plicity of designations, such as Bo gtr otters, Red- 
shanks, Ribbonrn en, Cottiers, Peep-of -day Boys, Babes 
of the Wood, Rockites, Poor Slaves ; which last, 
however, seems to be the primary and generic name ; 
whereto, probably enough, the others are only sub- 
sidiary species, or slight varieties ; or, at most, pro- 
pagated offsets from the parent stem, whose minute 
subdivisions, and shades of difference, it were here 
loss of time to dwell on. Enough for us to under- 
stand, what seems indubitable, that the original sect 
is that of the Poor-Slaves ; whose doctrines, practices, 
and fundamental characteristics, pervade and animate 
the whole body, howsoever denominated or outwardly 
diversified. 

" The precise speculative tenets of this brother- 
hood j how the universe, and man, and man's life, 
picture themselves to the mind of an Irish Poor-Slave ; 
with what feelings and opinions he looks forward on 
the future, round on the present, back on the past, it 
were extremely difficult to specify. Something monas- 



284 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

tic there appears to be in their constitution. We find 
them bound by the two monastic vows, of Poverty and 
Obedience ; which vows, especially the former, it is 
said, they observe with great strictness ; nay, as I have 
understood it, they are pledged, and be it by any solemn 
Nazarene ordination or not, irrevocably enough con- 
secrated thereto, even before birth. That the third 
monastic vow, of Chastity, is rigidly enforced among 
them, I find no ground to conjecture. 

" Furthermore, they appear to imitate the Dandia- 
cal sect in their grand principle of wearing a peculiar 
costume. Of which Irish Poor-Slave costume no de- 
scription will, indeed, be found in the present volume ; 
for this reason, that by the imperfect organ of lan- 
guage it seemed indescribable. Their raiment con- 
sists of innumerable skirts, lappets, and irregular 
wings, of all cloths and of all colors ; through the 
labyrinthic intricacies of which their bodies are intro- 
duced by some unknown process. It is fastened to- 
gether by a multiplex combination of buttons, thrums, 
and skewers ; to which frequently is added a girdle of 
leather, of hempen or even of straw rope, round the 
loins. To straw rope, indeed, they seem partial, and 
often wear it by way of sandals. In head-dress they 
affect a certain freedom ; hats with partial brim, with- 
out crown, or with only a loose, hinged, or valve crown. 
In the former case, they sometimes invert the hat, and 
wear it brim uppermost, like a University-cap, with 
what view is unknown. 

" The name, Poor-Slaves, seems to indicate a 
Sclavonic, Polish, or Russian origin. Not so, however, 
the interior essence and spirit of their superstition, 
which rather displays a Teutonic or Druidical char- 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 285 

acter. One might fancy them worshippers of Hertha, 
or the Earth ; for they dig and affectionately work 
continually in her bosom ; or else, shut up in private 
Oratories, meditate and manipulate the substances 
derived from her ; seldom looking up towards the 
heavenly luminaries, and then with comparative in- 
difference. Like the Druids, on the other hand, they 
live in dark dwellings ; often even breaking their glass- 
windows, where they find such, and stuffing them up 
with pieces of raiment, or other opaque substances, till 
the fit obscurity is restored. Again, like all followers 
of Nature-Worship, they are liable to out-breakings of 
an enthusiasm rising to ferocity ; and burn men, if not 
in wicker idols, yet in sod cottages. 

" In respect of diet, they have also their observances. 
All Poor-Slaves are Rhizophagous (or Root-eaters); 
a few are Ichthyophagous, and use salted herrings. 
Other animal food they abstain from ; except indeed, 
with perhaps some strange inverted fragments of a 
Brahminical feeling, such animals as die a natural 
death. Their universal sustenance is the root named 
Potato, cooked by fire alone ; and generally without 
condiment or relish of any kind, save an unknown con- 
diment named Point, into the meaning of which I have 
vainly inquired ; the victual Potato es-and-Point not 
appearing, at least not with specific accuracy of de- 
cription, in any European cookery-book whatever. 
For drink they use, with an almost epigrammatic 
counterpoise of taste, milk, which is the mildest of li- 
quors, and potheen, which is the fiercest. This latter 
I have tasted, as well as the English blue-ruin, and 
the Scotch whiskey, analogous fluids used by the sect 
in those countries. It evidently contains some form 



286 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

of alcohol, in the highest state of concentration, though 
disguised with acrid oils ; and is, on the whole, the 
most pungent substance known to me — indeed, a per- 
fect liquid fire. In all their religious solemnities, potheen 
is said to be an indispensable requisite, and largely con- 
sumed. 

"An Irish traveller, of perhaps common veracity, 
who presents himself under the to me unmeaning title 
of The late John Bernard, offers the following sketch 
of a domestic establishment, the inmates whereof, 
though such is not stated expressly, appear to have 
been of that faith. Thereby shall my German readers 
now behold an Irish Poor-Slave, as it were with their 
own eyes ; and even see him at meat. Moreover, in 
the so precious waste-paper sheet above mentioned, I 
have found some corresponding picture of a Dandiacal 
household, painted by that same Dandiacal Mysta- 
gogue, or Theogonist. This also, by way of counter- 
part and contrast, the world shall look into. 

" First, therefore, of the Poor-Slave, who appears 
likewise to have been a species of innkeeper. I quote 
from the original : ' Tlie furniture of this Caravan- 
sera consisted of a large iron pot, two oaken tables, 
two benches, two chairs, and a potheen noggin. There 
was a loft above (attainable by a ladder), upon which 
the inmates slept ; and the space below was divided by 
a hurdle into two apartments ; the one for their cow 
and pig, the other for themselves and guests. O 
entering the house we discovered the family, eleven in 
number, at dinner ; the father sitting at the top, the 
mother at bottom, the children on each side of a large 
oaken board which was scooped out in the middle, like 
a trough, to receive the contents of their pot of potatoes* 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 287 

Little holes were cut at equal distances to contain salt ; 
and a bowl of milk stood on the table. All the luxuries 
of meat and beer, bread, knives, and dishes were dis- 
pensed with. 1 The Poor-Slave himself our traveller 
found, as he says, broad-backed, black-browed, of 
great personal strength, and mouth from ear to ear. 
His wife was a sun-browned but well-featured woman ; 
and his young ones, bare and chubby, had the appetite 
of ravens. Of their philosophical, or religious tenets 
or observances, no notice or hint. 

" But now, secondly, of the Dandiacal household ; 
in which, truly, that often-mentioned Mystagogue and 
inspired Penman himself has his abode : • A dress- 
ing-room splendidly furnished ; violet-colored curtains, 
chairs and ottomans of the same hue. Two full-length 
mirrors are placed, one on each side of a table, which 
supports the luxuries of the toilet. Several bottles of 
perfumes, arranged in a pecidiar fashion, stand upon 
a smaller table of mother-of-pearl ; opposite to these 
are placed the appurtenances of lavaiion, richly 
wrought in frosted silver. A wardrobe of buhl is on 
the left ; the doors of which being partly open discover 
a profusion of clothes. Shoes of a singularly s?nall 
size monopolize the lower shelves. Fronting the ward- 
robe, a door ajar gives some slight glimpse of a bath- 
room. Folding-doors in the back-ground. — Enter the 
Author (our Theogonist in person), obsequiously pre- 
ceded by a French valet in white silk jacket and 
cambric apron.'' 

" Such are the two sects which, at this moment, 
divide the more unsettled portion of the British peo- 
ple, and agitate that ever-vexed country. To the eye 
of the political seer, their mutual relation, pregnant 



288 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

with the elements of discord and hostility, is far 
from consoling. These two principles of Dandiacal 
Self-worship or Demon-worship, and Poor-Slavish 
or Drudgical Earth-worship, or whatever that same 
Drudgism may be, do as yet, indeed, manifest them- 
selves under distant and nowise considerable shapes ; 
nevertheless, in their roots and subterranean ramifi- 
cations, they extend through the entire structure of 
society, and work unweariedly in the secret depths of 
English national existence ; striving to separate arid 
isolate it into two contradictory, uncommunicating 
masses. 

" In numbers, and even individual strength, the 
Poor-Slaves or Drudges, it would seem, are hourly 
increasing. The Dandiacal, again, is by nature no 
proselytizing sect ; but it boasts of great hereditary 
resources, and is strong by union. Whereas the 
Drudges, split into parties, have as yet no rallying 
point; or, at best, only cooperate by means of partial 
secret affiliations. If, indeed, there were to arise a 
Communion of Drudges, as there is already a Com- 
munion of Saints, what strangest effects would follow 
therefrom ! Dandyism as yet effects to look down on 
Drudgism. But, perhaps, the hour of trial when it 
will be practically seen which ought to look down, 
and which up, is not so distant. 

"To me it seems probable that the two sects will 
one day part England between them ; each recruiting 
itself from the intermediate ranks, till there be none 
left to enlist on either side. Those Dandiacal Mani- 
cheans, with the host of Dandyizing Christians, will 
form one body. The Drudges, gathering round them 
whosoever is drudgical, be he Christian or Infidel 



THE DANDIACAL BODY. 289 

Pagan ; sweeping up likewise all manner of utilitari- 
ans, radicals, refractory pot-walloppers, and so forth, 
into their general mass, will form another. I could liken 
Dandyism and Drudgism to two bottomless boiling 
whirlpools that had broken out on opposite quarters of 
the firm land. As yet they appear only disquieted, 
foolishly bubbling wells, which man's art might cover 
in. Yet mark them, their diameter is daily widening; 
they are hollow cones that boil up from the infinite 
deep, over which your firm land is but a thin crust or 
rind ! Thus daily is the intermediate land crumbling 
in, daily the empire of the two Buchan-Bullers extend- 
ing ; till now there is but a foot-plank, a mere film of 
land between them ; this, too, is washed away ; and 
then — we have the true hell of waters, and Noah's 
Deluge is outdeluged ! 

" Or better, I might call them two boundless, and, 
indeed, unexampled electric machines (turned by the 
' machinery of society'), with batteries of opposite qua- 
lity ; Drudgism the negative, Dandyism the positive. 
One attracts hourly towards it, and appropriates all the 
positive electricity of the nation (namely, the money 
thereof) ; the other is equally busy with the negative 
(that is to say, the hunger), which is equally potent. 
Hitherto you see only partial, transient sparkles and 
sputters ; but wait a little, till the entire nation is in 
an electric state ; till your whole vital electricity, no 
longer healthfully neutral, is cut into two isolated 
portions of positive and negative (of money and of 
hunger) ; and stands there bottled up in two world- 
batteries ! The stirring of a child's finger brings the 
two together ; and then — What then ? The earth 
is but shivered into impalpable smoke by that Doom's- 

25 



290 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

thunder-peal ; the sun misses one of his planets in 
space, and thenceforth there are no eclipses of the 
moon. — Or, better still, I might liken" 

Oh ! enough, enough of Hkenings and similitudes ; 
in excess of which, truly, it is hard to say whether 
Teufelsdrockh or ourselves sin the more. 

We have often blamed him for a habit of wire-draw- 
ing and over-refining ; from of old we have been 
familiar with his tendency to mysticism and religiosity, 
whereby in every thing he was still scenting out reli- 
gion ; but never, perhaps, did these amaurosis suffusions 
so cloud and distort his otherwise most piercing vision, 
as in this of the Dandiacal Body ! Or was there 
something of intended satire ; is the Professor and 
Seer not quite the blinkard he affects to be ? Of an 
ordinary mortal we should have decisively answered 
in the affirmative ; but with a Teulfelsdrockh there 
ever hovers some shade of doubt. In the meanwhile, 
if satire were actually intended, the case is little 
better. There are not wanting men who will answer : 
Does your Professor take us for simpletons 1 His 
irony has overshot itself; we see through it, and per- 
haps through him. 



CHAPTER XI. 

TAILORS. 

Thus, however, has our first practical inference 
from the Clothes-Philosophy, that which respects 
Dandies, been sufficiently drawn ; and we come now 
to the second, concerning Tailors. On this latter our 
opinion happily quite coincides with that of Teufels- 
drockh himself, as expressed in the concluding page of 



TAILORS. 291 

his volume ; to whom, therefore, we willingly give place. 
Let him speak his own last words, in his own way. 

" Upwards of a century," says he, " must elapse, 
and still the bleeding fight of freedom be fought, 
whoso is noblest perishing in the van, and thrones be 
hurled on altars like Pelion on Ossa, and the Moloch 
of iniquity have his victims, and the Michael of justice 
his martyrs, before Tailors can be admitted to their 
true prerogatives of manhood, and this last wound 
of suffering humanity be closed. 

" If aught in the history of the world's blindness 
could surprise us, here might we indeed pause and 
wonder. An idea has gone abroad, and fixed itself 
down into a wide-spreading, rooted error, that Tailors 
are a distinct species in physiology, not men, but 
fractional parts of a man. Call any one a Schneider 
(Cutter, Tailor), is it not, in our dislocated, hood- 
winked, and, indeed, delirious condition of society, 
equivalent to defying his perpetual, fellest enmity ? 
The epithet Schneidermassig (Tailor-like), betokens 
an otherwise unapproachable degree of pusillanimity. 
We introduce a Tailor's-Melancholy, more opprobri- 
ous than any leprosy, into our books of medicine; 
and fable I know not what of his generating it by 
living on cabbage. Why should I speak of Hans 
Sachs (himself a Shoemaker, or kind of Leather- 
Tailor), with his Schneider mit dem Panier ? Why 
of Shakspeare, in his Taming of the Shrew, and 
elsewhere ? Does it not stand on record that the 
English Queen Elizabeth, receiving a deputation of 
eighteen Tailors, addressed them with a, * Good morn- 
ing, gentlemen both !' Did not the same virago boast 
that she had a cavalry regiment, whereof neither horse 



292 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

nor man could be injured; her regiment, namely, of 
Tailors on mares ? Thus everywhere is the falsehood 
taken for granted, and acted on as an indisputable fact. 

" Nevertheless, need I put the question to any 
physiologist, whether it is disputable or not? Seems 
it not at least presumable, that, under his clothes, the 
Tailor has bones, and viscera, and other muscles than the 
sartorius ? Which function of manhood is the Tailor 
not conjectured to perform ? Can he not arrest for debt ? 
Is he not in most countries a tax-paying animal? 

To no reader of this volume can it be doubtful 
which conviction is mine. Nay, if the fruit of these 
long vigils, and almost preternatural inquiries, is not to 
perish utterly, the world will have approximated to- 
wards a higher truth ; and the doctrine, which Swift, 
with the keen forecast of genius, dimly anticipated, 
will stand revealed in clear light ; that the Tailor is 
not only a man, but something of a creator or divinity. 
Of Franklin it was said, that ' he snatched the thun- 
der from heaven and the sceptre from kings;' but 
which is greater, I would ask, he that lends, or he 
that snatches ? For, looking away from individual 
cases, and how a man is by the Tailor new-created 
into a nobleman, and clothed not only with wool, but 
with dignity and a mystic dominion, — is not the fair 
fabric of society itself, with all its royal mantles and 
pontifical stoles, whereby, from nakedness and dis- 
memberment, we are organized into polities, into 
nations, and whole cooperating mankind, the creation, 
as has here been often irrefragably evinced, of the 
Tailor alone? — What, too, are all poets, and moral 
teachers, but a species of metaphorical Tailors ? 
Touching which high guild, the greatest living guild- 



TAILORS. 293 

brother has triumphantly asked us : * Nay, if thou 
wilt have it, who but the poet first made gods for men; 
brought them down to us ; and raised us up to them?' 

" And this is he, whom sitting downcast, on the 
hard basis of his shop-board, the world treats with 
contumely, as the ninth part of a man ! Look up, 
thou much injured one, look up with the kindling eye 
of hope, and prophetic bodings of a noble better 
time. Too long hast thon sat there, on ciossed legs, 
wearing thy ankle-joints to horn; like some sacred 
anchorite, or Catholic Fakir, doing penance, drawing 
down Heaven's richest blessings, for a world that 
scoffed at thee. Be of hope ! Already streaks of blue 
peer through our clouds ; the thick gloom of igno- 
rance is rolling asunder, and it will be day. Man- 
kind will repay with interest their long-accumulated 
debt ; the anchorite that was scoffed at will be wor- 
shipped ; the fraction will become not an integer only, 
but a square and cube. With astonishment the world 
will recognize that the Tailor is its hierophant, and 
hierarch, or even its God. 

"As I stood in the Mosque of St. Sophia, and looked 
upon these four-and-twenty Tailors, sewing and em- 
broidering that rich cloth which the Sultan sends 
yearly for the Caaba of Mecca, I thought within 
myself: How many other unholies has your covering 
art made holy, besides this Arabian Whinstone ! 

" Still more touching was it when, turning the corner 
of a lane, in the Scottish town, of Edinburgh, I came 
upon a signpost, whereon stood written that such 
and such a one was 'Breeches-maker to his Majesty;' 
and stood painted the effigies of a pair of leather 
breeches, and between the knees these memorable 

25* 



294 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

words, Sic itur ad astra. Was not this the martyr 
prison-speech of a Tailor, sighing indeed in bonds, yet 
sighing towards deliverance ; and prophetically appeal- 
ing to a better day; a day of justice, when the worth 
of breeches would be revealed to man, and the scissors 
become forever venerable? 

"Neither, perhaps, may I now say, has his appeal 
been altogether in vain. It was in this high moment, 
when the soul, rent, as it were, and shed asunder, is 
open to inspiring influence, that I first conceived this 
work on Clothes ; the greatest I can ever hope to do ; 
which has already, after long retardations, occupied, 
and will yet occupy, so large a section of my life : 
and of which the primary and simpler portion may 
here find its conclusion." 



CHAPTER XII. 

FAREWELL. 

Fo have we endeavoured, from the enormous, 
amorphous plum-pudding, more like a Scottish haggis, 
which Herr Teufelsdrockh had kneaded for his fellow- 
mortals, to pick out the choicest plums, and present 
them separately on a cover of our own. A laborious, 
perhaps a thankless enterprise in which, however, 
something of hope has occasionally cheered us, and of 
which we can now wash our hands not altogether 
without satisfaction. If hereby, though in barbaric 
wise, some morsel of spiritual nourishment have been 
added to the scanty ration of our beloved British 
world, what nobler recompense could the editor de- 
sire ? If it prove otherwise, why should he murmur ? 
Was not this a task which destiny, in any case, had 
appointed him ; which being now done with, he sees 



FAREWELL. 295 

his general day's-work so much the lighter, so much 
the shorter? 

Of Professor Teufelsdrockh it seems impossible to 
take leave without a mingled feeling of astonishment, 
gratitude, and disapproval. Who will not regret that 
talents, which might have profited in the higher walks 
of philosophy, or in art itself, have been so much de- 
voted to a rummaging among lumber-rooms ; nay, 
too often to a scraping in kennels, where lost rings 
and diamond necklaces are nowise the sole conquests? 
Regret is unavoidable ; yet censure were loss of time. 
To cure him of his mad humors British criticism 
would essay in vain ; enough for her if she can, by 
vigilance, prevent the spreading of such among our- 
selves. What a result, should this piebald, entangled, 
hypermetaphorical style of writing, not to say of 
thinking, become general among our literary men ! as 
it might so easily do. Thus, has not the Editor him- 
self, working over Teufelsdrb'ckh's German, lost much 
of his own English purity ? Even as the smaller 
whirlpool is sucked into the larger, and made to whirl 
along with it, so must the lesser mind, in this instance, 
become portion of the greater, and, like it, see all 
things figuratively ; which habit, time and assiduous 
effort will be needed to eradicate. 

Nevertheless, way ward as our Professor shows him- 
self, is there any reader that can part with him in 
declared enmity ? Let us confess, there is that in the 
wild, much-suffering, much-inflicting man, which al- 
most attaches us. His attitude, we will hope and 
believe, is that of a man who had said to Cant, Be- 
gone ; and to Dilettantism, Here thou canst not be: 
and to Truth, Be thou in place of all to me. A 



296 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

man who had manfully defied the " Time-Prince," or 
Devil, to his face ; nay, perhaps, Hannibal-like, was 
mysteriously consecrated from birth to that warfare, and 
now stood minded to wage the same, by all weapons, 
in all places, at all times. In such a cause, any soldier, 
were he but a Polack Scythe-man, shall be welcome. 

Still the question returns on us : How could a man 
occasionally of keen insight, not without keen sense 
of propriety, who had real thoughts to communicate, 
resolve to emit them in a shape bordering so closely 
on the absurd ? Which question he were wiser than 
the present Editor who should satisfactoiily answer. 
Our conjecture has sometimes been, that perhaps ne- 
cessity as well as choice was concerned in it. Seems 
it not conceivable that, in a life like our Professor's, 
where so much bountifully given by nature had in 
practice failed and misgone, literature also would 
never rightly prosper; that, striving with his charac- 
teristic vehemence to paint this and the other picture, 
and ever without success, he at last desperately dashes 
his brush full of all colors, against the canvass, to 
try whether it will paint foam ? With all his still- 
ness, there were perhaps in Teufelsdrockh desperation 
enough for this. 

A second conjecture we hazard with even less 
warranty. It is, that Teufelsdrockh is not without 
some touch of the universal feeling, a wish to prose- 
lytize. How often already have we paused, uncertain 
whether the basis of this so enigmatic nature were 
really stoicism and despair, or love and hope only 
seared into the figure of these ! Remarkable, more- 
over, is this saying of his : " How were friendship 
possible ? In mutual devotedness to the good and 



FAREWELL. 297 

true. Otherwise impossible ; except as armed neu- 
trality, or hollow commercial league. A man, be the 
heavens ever praised, is sufficient for himself ; yet 
were ten men, united in love, capable of being and of 
doing what ten thousand singly would fail in. Infinite 
is the help man can yield to man." And now in con- 
junction therewith consider this other: "It is the 
night of the world, and still long till it be day. We 
wander amid the glimmer of smoking ruins, and the 
sun and the stars of heaven are as blotted out for a 
season ; and two immeasurable phantoms, Hypocrisy 
and Atheism, with the Gowle, Sensuality, stalk 
abroad over the earth, and call it theirs. Well at ease 
are the sleepers for whom existence is a shallow dream. 

But what of the awestruck wakeful who find it a 
reality ? Should not these unite ; since even an 
authentic spectre is not visible to two ? — In which 
case were this enormous Clothes-volume properly an 
enormous pitchpan, which our Teufelsdrockh in his 
lone watch-tower had kindled, that it might flame far 
and wide through the night, and many a disconsolately 
wandering spirit be guided thither to a brother's 
bosom ! — We say as before, with all his malign indiffer- 
ence, who knows what mad hopes this man may harbor? 

Meanwhile there is one fact to be stated here which 
harmonizes ill with such conjecture ; and, indeed, 
were Teufelsdrockh made like other men, might as 
good as altogether subvert it. Namely, that while the 
beacon-fire blazed its brightest, the watchman had 
quitted it ; that no pilgrim could now ask him : Watch- 
man, what of the night ? Professor Teufelsdrockh, 
be it known, is no longer visibly present at Weiss- 
nichtwo, but again to all appearance lost in space ! 



298 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

Some time ago the Hofrath Heuschrecke was pleased 
to favor us with another copious epistle ; wherein 
much is said about the " Population Institute ;" much 
repeated in praise of the Paper-bag Documents, the 
hieroglyphic nature of which our Hofrath still seems 
not to have surmised ; and, lastly, the strangest occur- 
rence communicated, to us for the first time, in the 
following paragraph : 

41 Ew. TVohlgebohren will have seen, from the pub- 
lic prints, with what affectionate and hitherto fruitless 
solicitude Weissnichtwo regards the disappearance of 
her sage. Might but the united voice of Germany 
prevail on him to return ; nay, could we but so much 
as elucidate for ourselves by what mystery he went 
away ! But, alas, old Leischen experiences or affects 
the profoundest deafness, the profoundest ignorance. 
In the Wahngasse all lies swept, silent, sealed up; 
the privy council itself can hitherto elicit no answer. 

"It had been remarked that while the agitating 
news of those Parisian Three Days flew from mouth 
to mouth, and dinned every ear in Weissnichtwo, Herr 
Teufelsdrockh was not known, at the Ganse or else- 
where, to have spoken, for a whole week, any syllable 
except once these three ; Es geht cm (It is beginning). 
Shortly after, as Ew. Wohlgebohren knows, was the 
public tranquillity here, as in Berlin, threatened by a 
sedition of the Tailors. Nor did there want evil- 
wishers, or perhaps mere desperate alarmists, who 
asserted that the closing chapter of the Clothes-volume 
was to blame. In this appalling crisis, the serenity of 
our Philosopher was indescribable. Nay, perhaps, 
through one humble individual, something thereof 
might pass into the Rath (Council) itself, and so con- 



FAREWELL. 299 

tribute to the country's deliverance The Tailors are 
now entirely pacificated. — To neither of these two 
incidents can I attribute our loss. Yet still comes 
there the shadow of a suspicion out of Paris and its 
politics. For example, when the Saint- Simonian 
Society transmitted its propositions hither, and the 
whole Ganse was one vast cackle of laughter, lament- 
ation, and astonishment, our sage sat mute ; and at 
the end of the third evening, said merely : ' Here also 
are men who have discovered, not without amazement, 
that man is still man ;* of which high, long-forgotten 
truth you already see them make a false application.' 
Since then, as has been ascertained by examination of 
the Post Director, there passed at least one letter with 
its answer between the Messieurs Bazard Enfantin and 
our Professor himself; of what tenor can now only be 
conjectured. On the fifth night following, he was seen 
for the last time ! 

" Has this invaluable man, so obnoxious to most of 
the hostile sects that convulse our era, been spirited 
away by certain of their emissaries ; or did he go 
forth voluntarily to their head-quarters to confer with 
them, and confront them ? Reason we have, at least 
of a negative sort, to believe the Lost still living. Our 
widowed heart also whispers that ere long he will 
himself give a sign. Otherwise, indeed, must his 
archives, one day, be opened by authority ; where 
much, perhaps the Palingenesie itself, is thought to be 
reposited." 

Thus far the Hofrath ; who vanishes, as is his wont, 
too, like an ignis fatuus, leaving the dark still darker. 
— So that Teufelsdrockh's public history were not 
done, then, or reduced to an even, unromantic tenor; 



300 SARTOR RESARTUS. 

nay, perhaps, the better part thereof were only begin- 
ning? We stand in a region of conjectures, where 
substance has melted into shadow, and one cannot be 
distinguished from the other. May time, which solves 
or suppresses all problems, throw glad light on this 
also. Our own private conjecture, now amounting al- 
most to certainty, is, that safe-moored in some stillest 
obscurity, not to lie alway still, Teufelsdrockh is actu- 
ally in London ! 

Here, however, can the present Editor, with an 
ambrosial joy as of over-weariness falling into sleep, 
lay down his pen. Well does he know, if human 
testimony be worth aught, that to innumerable British 
readers likewise, it is a satisfying consummation ; that 
innumerable British readers consider him, during these 
current months, but as an uneasy interruption to their 
ways of thought and digestion, not without a certain 
irritancy and even spoken invective. For which, as 
for other mercies, ought he not to thank the Upper 
Powers ? To one and all of you, O irritated readers, 
he, with outstretched arms and open heart, will wave 
a kind farewell. Thou, too, miraculous Entity, that 
namest thyself Yorke and Oliver, and with thy viva- 
cities and genialities, with thy ail-too Irish mirth and 
madness, and odor of palled punch, makest such 
strange work, farewellj long as thou canst, fare-well J 
Have we not, in the course of eternity, travelled some 
months of our life-journey in partial sight of one 
another ; have we not lived together, though in a state 
of quarrel ? 

THE END. 




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